Complex Paph Genetics

[CharlesD]

Thought I would post a comparison here of two very similar crosses with surprisingly different outcomes. The two crosses are from Teresa Hill and both with objective of making spotted white and pink flowers. The first is blockbuster x white queen and the second is white knight x blockbuster. Blockbuster is heavily spotted on both the dorsal and petals with less red coloring so using it as a parent would hopefully get more spotting versus pink color. I’ve bloomed out several from of both crosses but here are the two most recent. The white queen cross has made spotted pinks across the 3 that I’ve bloomed whereas the the white knight cross has had finer spotting (possibly since the spotted was not used as the pod parent) and the dark brown lines on the petals. White queen and white knight are both skip Bartlett crosses but white knight uses green mystery as the green parent while white queen uses via virgenes. I believe green mystery (also a parent of elfstone) to possess recessive genetics for these lines whereas via virgenes does not as far as I can tell. I have also included a photo of a cross of smokestack lightning x stone lovely displaying the same lines (green mystery is a grandparent of stone lovely). I have seen similar markings on other stone lovely cross as well. It is wild how different these two flowers are for how similar the genetics are.

 

[Bailey Hale]

That's the fun of genetics! Nice plants. I suppose you need to grow out a couple hundred of each cross to unlock their secrets!

I wish I could still get stuff from Teresa. She's just lovely as are her plants.

 

[Ross]

Thank you for the interesting post. You said the other White Queen cross plants were more pink? I would love to see them. A couple of comments/questions:
1. Do you know which cultivars (especially of White Queen and White Knight) were used in the crosses? I think that can make a difference in the outcome. For example, White Knight 'Guinevere' is relatively large and retains some pastel green color while the smaller White Knight 'Clear Light' is almost pristine white. Which would have more progeny that are white/pink? Would it make a difference?

2. As one moves more generations away from the "touchstone" breeder (in this case Skip Bartlett), is the ability to suppress green/gold color diluted or in some cultivars, eliminated altogether? I suspect it would vary from one cultivar to the next.

 

[Ross]

That's the fun of genetics! Nice plants. I suppose you need to grow out a couple hundred of each cross to unlock their secrets!

I wish I could still get stuff from Teresa. She's just lovely as are her plants.

It's definitely an advantage to see as many flowers of a cross as possible, but probably not that many. As I've continued to make hybrids, I've started to learn that certain crosses will have more consistency, and others will be more variable. This applies to both good and bad characteristics.

 

[CharlesD]

Hi Ross, so it is the same Blockbuster parent ‘Big News’ and the other parents are White Queen ‘Diamond Tiara’ and White Knight ‘Clear Light’. I’ll include pics of what I’ve bloomed below. I have one more of the white knight x blockbuster cross in bud for this year. On the whole I prefer the white queen cross as the pink color comes through and the spotting is closer to what I’m looking to breed for - larger more coalesced spots on a white or pink background vs the more fine speckles

 

[CharlesD]

The white knight x blockbuster posted above now fully open. It is quite cupped but it has grown on me

 

[CharlesD]

Here are the three blockbuster x white queen. The last is most dominated by blockbuster and received an HCC

 

[CharlesD]

Here is the other white knight x blockbuster, much whiter in color but I almost thought it would be alba somehow as the plant has no leaf pigment and the bud was white.

I have 6 plants of each cross. So a few left to bloom of each

 

[CharlesD]

Re the suppression of the green base color I think you are correct that as the generations go further away from the brachy parentage the effect is less and less. It will be interesting to see what the fertility is like on these. I have a division of white queen ‘diamond tiara’ and its leaves look like polyploid’s if I have ever seen one which would explain its fertility but that might create problems in the next generation if the ploidy is unusual in the offspring. For example Paph Shirokane has not proved very fertile. I do have plants of that backcrossed to white queen also from Teresa. She said she had very low yield. The plants have cardboard like leaves and surely are polyploids, I am hopefully that these will have surpassed the fertility barrier but we’ll see. The buds blasted on both for me

Interesting in the pink/spotted white breeding a lot of the spotted flowers have a green/chartreuse cooor at the base of the petals and dorsal that comes through. Maybe there are red and spotted cultivars without this but I don’t have one yet