Lippewunder 'Giant'

[Bailey Hale]

I picked up a division of Lippewunder 'Giant' from Select Orchids back in September and it's living up to its name! I can only imagine how big it will get once it is a bit more established.

I am interested in breeding teacup complex types, so I pollinated it with P. rungsuriyanum. I'm not sure starting with a Giant is the best way to arrive at a miniature, but hey, only one way to find out! P. rungsuriyanum seems to shrink anything down to size.

 

[Happypaphy7]

Maybe pair this one with helenae first? The results will be all over the place but you can select out the smallest plants with the largest flowers with good shape. Or do both, but I personally find rung hybrids mostly not my cup of tea.

 

[Bailey Hale]

Maybe pair this one with helenae first? The results will be all over the place but you can select out the smallest plants with the largest flowers with good shape. Or do both, but I personally find rung hybrids mostly not my cup of tea.

I agree that helenae would probably make prettier babies. I happen to have a 4n rung, and Lippewunder must be 4n so I'm hoping it will make something fertile I can build on. I don't have any 4n helenae at the moment. I have a few seedlings of 4n Wossner Ministar (heleneae x henryanum) which could be a good match as well. I think they will flower next year.

I'm not wild about the rung hybrids, but I think the subsequent generations will be interesting. It is so dominant in so many ways. I like how it makes nice clumps, seemingly grows and flowers quickly and is seemingly adaptable and easy to grow. The shape and short stems can hopefully be overcome with selection. Also I would welcome some brighter purple tones in the complex world.

I'm trying to avoid breeding dead ends, so if you know of any 4n species or small hybrids let me know!

 

[CharlesD]

I agree that helenae would probably make prettier babies. I happen to have a 4n rung, and Lippewunder must be 4n so I'm hoping it will make something fertile I can build on. I don't have any 4n helenae at the moment. I have a few seedlings of 4n Wossner Ministar (heleneae x henryanum) which could be a good match as well. I think they will flower next year.

I'm not wild about the rung hybrids, but I think the subsequent generations will be interesting. It is so dominant in so many ways. I like how it makes nice clumps, seemingly grows and flowers quickly and is seemingly adaptable and easy to grow. The shape and short stems can hopefully be overcome with selection. Also I would welcome some brighter purple tones in the complex world.

I'm trying to avoid breeding dead ends, so if you know of any 4n species or small hybrids let me know!

Will be interesting to see, hopefully the cross takes! I have only seen the cross of rungsuryanum and Hellas which is 2N not a full on polyploid complex. I wonder what rung will be as dominant as the lippewunder for color. Crossing species to complex is an interesting proposition. Using the 4N species makes the most sense for long term fertility of the breeding line but sometimes the results are prettier using a 2N species which is then more dominated by the polyploid complex. I got a plant of villosum x lippewunder attached that demonstrates this. I can't speak to the fertility of these lines as they go on but some of them have. I am not really sure whether any complex are straight 4N or just odd aneuploid/polyploids, but in theory if one gets 3N offspring if you can get any seed some have the potential to be 4N or 5N depending on the ploidy of the parent you use as a percentage of the 3N gametes will be unreduced 3N instead of 1.5N (see H. Kamemoto or Roy Tokunaga's writings)

 

[Happypaphy7]

I agree that helenae would probably make prettier babies. I happen to have a 4n rung, and Lippewunder must be 4n so I'm hoping it will make something fertile I can build on. I don't have any 4n helenae at the moment. I have a few seedlings of 4n Wossner Ministar (heleneae x henryanum) which could be a good match as well. I think they will flower next year.

I'm not wild about the rung hybrids, but I think the subsequent generations will be interesting. It is so dominant in so many ways. I like how it makes nice clumps, seemingly grows and flowers quickly and is seemingly adaptable and easy to grow. The shape and short stems can hopefully be overcome with selection. Also I would welcome some brighter purple tones in the complex world.

I'm trying to avoid breeding dead ends, so if you know of any 4n species or small hybrids let me know!

True. Rungs have its great advantages as you mentioned, but the flower shape and colors are so dominant that it can't serve any breeding purposes. Not sure. Maybe with brachys and parvis perhaps, ok, even with fairrieanum it can be quite nice, but that's about it for my personal taste. haha

Btw, are those plants confirmed 4N? I ask because too often people just assume plants are 4N based on certain visible features which can be misleading and not even real 4N.
I love yellow flowers, so I'd love a helenae hybrids. I once had this very nice In-Charm Topaz where the plant was just slightly larger than helenae but the flower was as large as the entire plant! It was full round flowers but it literally looked like a giant helenae. wish I had it here with me. Oh, well...the search continues!

 

[Happypaphy7]

Will be interesting to see, hopefully the cross takes! I have only seen the cross of rungsuryanum and Hellas which is 2N not a full on polyploid complex. I wonder what rung will be as dominant as the lippewunder for color. Crossing species to complex is an interesting proposition. Using the 4N species makes the most sense for long term fertility of the breeding line but sometimes the results are prettier using a 2N species which is then more dominated by the polyploid complex. I got a plant of villosum x lippewunder attached that demonstrates this. I can't speak to the fertility of these lines as they go on but some of them have. I am not really sure whether any complex are straight 4N or just odd aneuploid/polyploids, but in theory if one gets 3N offspring if you can get any seed some have the potential to be 4N or 5N depending on the ploidy of the parent you use as a percentage of the 3N gametes will be unreduced 3N instead of 1.5N (see H. Kamemoto or Roy Tokunaga's writings)

I'm not sure if it's the camera angel but the flower seems proportionally small compared to how large the leaves are?
It did maintain nice shape and beautiful colors of Lippewunder, though! I'm sure some other seedlings will turn out looking more like "fat" villowum than this. Imagine the fun!

 

[CharlesD]

I'm not sure if it's the camera angel but the flower seems proportionally small compared to how large the leaves are?
It did maintain nice shape and beautiful colors of Lippewunder, though! I'm sure some other seedlings will turn out looking more like "fat" villowum than this. Imagine the fun!

The stem is nearly 2ft tall and the plant is a bush so you are correct! I thought it was a nice outcome and I not going to complain if the plant is very vigorous - seems to send up lots of growths like villosum. Flower is close to a normal complex in size though

 

[Bailey Hale]

True. Rungs have its great advantages as you mentioned, but the flower shape and colors are so dominant that it can't serve any breeding purposes. Not sure. Maybe with brachys and parvis perhaps, ok, even with fairrieanum it can be quite nice, but that's about it for my personal taste. haha

Btw, are those plants confirmed 4N? I ask because too often people just assume plants are 4N based on certain visible features which can be misleading and not even real 4N.
I love yellow flowers, so I'd love a helenae hybrids. I once had this very nice In-Charm Topaz where the plant was just slightly larger than helenae but the flower was as large as the entire plant! It was full round flowers but it literally looked like a giant helenae. wish I had it here with me. Oh, well...the search continues!

I can't be 100% sure it is a 4n rung, but I got it from Xavier and he's pretty smart about this stuff. I don't know if he counted chromosomes or not, but it came from a batch of colchicine treated seedlings and this seedling at least exhibited some characteristics of being doubled.

 

[Bailey Hale]

Will be interesting to see, hopefully the cross takes! I have only seen the cross of rungsuryanum and Hellas which is 2N not a full on polyploid complex. I wonder what rung will be as dominant as the lippewunder for color. Crossing species to complex is an interesting proposition. Using the 4N species makes the most sense for long term fertility of the breeding line but sometimes the results are prettier using a 2N species which is then more dominated by the polyploid complex. I got a plant of villosum x lippewunder attached that demonstrates this. I can't speak to the fertility of these lines as they go on but some of them have. I am not really sure whether any complex are straight 4N or just odd aneuploid/polyploids, but in theory if one gets 3N offspring if you can get any seed some have the potential to be 4N or 5N depending on the ploidy of the parent you use as a percentage of the 3N gametes will be unreduced 3N instead of 1.5N (see H. Kamemoto or Roy Tokunaga's writings)

I have a plant of Blyat as well that has not yet bloomed but is in low bud. It will probably be easier to breed teacups with 2n plants as there aren't many mini 4n's out there. But most of the round flowered complex hybrids are 4n, and presumably being polyploid helps them to achieve their (rather unnatural) shape!

I know some suggest that starting with standard complex to make mini complex won't work and that it is better to start from scratch using miniature species. I don't see why you can't approach it from both angles and meet in the middle, so I'm doing some of each.

If I were producing for the potted plant market I would be making more 4n x 2n type crosses, but I'm just breeding for and I know I will need 2 or 3 generations to reach my goals. So I'm trying to keep ploidy consistent knowing full well that it will probably get messed up along the way!

Maybe next year I will use 2n rung pollen on Lippewunder. The result could be quite nice.

 

[CharlesD]

I have a plant of Blyat as well that has not yet bloomed but is in low bud. It will probably be easier to breed teacups with 2n plants as there aren't many mini 4n's out there. But most of the round flowered complex hybrids are 4n, and presumably being polyploid helps them to achieve their (rather unnatural) shape!

I know some suggest that starting with standard complex to make mini complex won't work and that it is better to start from scratch using miniature species. I don't see why you can't approach it from both angles and meet in the middle, so I'm doing some of each.

If I were producing for the potted plant market I would be making more 4n x 2n type crosses, but I'm just breeding for and I know I will need 2 or 3 generations to reach my goals. So I'm trying to keep ploidy consistent knowing full well that it will probably get messed up along the way!

Maybe next year I will use 2n rung pollen on Lippewunder. The result could be quite nice.

the dilemma is that I think when incorporating species the 3N results are sometimes prettier but especially with rungsuryanum I think using the 4N is a good idea as I would think chromosomes are not that compatible with complex hybrids so having the extra set is very helpful.

4N paphs I believe were done a little bit at EYOF. I think making 4N primary hybrids to use as amphi-diploid breeders would be super useful. This is what Xavier is trying to do I believe. Then these could be used to ‘anchor’ some complex hybrids and get more consistently good offspring that are fertile. I think it was easier in Cattleya breeding because the 4N plants appear in cloning whereas you can only colchicine treat paphs so no one since EYOF has made serious efforts toward this

 

[Tom-DE]

CharlesD, is this your plant? Can you tell me about the source/breeder? Really nice!

 

[CharlesD]

CharlesD, is this your plant? Can you tell me about the source/breeder? Really nice!

Yes it is another one from Hilo orchid farm from James Fang’s breeding judging by the tag. It is an older plant that I think Waldor orchids had in the back that decided to bloom. I’m was really happy with the quality for the type of cross. HOF has a couple awarded villosum and one of them is a parent so that maybe contributed to the quality

I tried to pollinate with Hellas ‘westonbirt’ but it does not seem the pollen has taken

 

[Tom-DE]

Thank you, Charles. Truly it is a nice one! I would love to have this complex in my collection even if I am pretty much a species snob these days.
I had a dozen awarded complex hybrids in my last collection...I shouldn't have sold them when I got rid of my last collection, but I still have a few of them.