Sunlight Sky Roths Roths Roths

[SelectOrchids]

Beautiful Sunlight Sky Roths, identified as such. note the collection of them blooming behind... Like rothschildianum on steroids, and impossible to distinguish, except gigantic dorsal, gigantic flowers....

 

[Ozpaph]

stunning flowers!

 

[Justin]

(Lady Isabel x roth) x roth

 

[SelectOrchids]

(Lady Isabel x roth) x roth

No, even worse

(( Lady Isabel x roth) x roth) x roth

Statistics, 6.25% stonei, reality, if the roth style were selected at each step, 1-2% max stonei...

 

[monocotman]

Indeed Roth, but even this 1-2% has increased the bloom size and produced spectacular flowers. Is there any hybrid vigour left in the grex?
Do they grow easily and quickly?
If I were to grow multiflorals I’d be very tempted by one of these.
The only issue is when they’re passed off as the true species. Another round of cross back crossing and they’ll be even harder to distinguish from the real thing.

 

[SelectOrchids]

Indeed Roth, but even this 1-2% has increased the bloom size and produced spectacular flowers. Is there any hybrid vigour left in the grex?
Do they grow easily and quickly?
If I were to grow multiflorals I’d be very tempted by one of these.
The only issue is when they’re passed off as the true species. Another round of cross back crossing and they’ll be even harder to distinguish from the real thing.

Yes they have incredible hybrid vigor, and from what I heard as well they readily produce a lot of seedlings....

They are actually passed as the true species in Taiwan for the last couple of years, which explains the 7-8-9 perfectly round dorsales on 35-40cm flowers in first bloom plants.

Ironically one ***** posted a picture of his 39cm rothschildianum in front of a whole bench of Sunlight Sky Roths a few months ago.... But once they are in the roth gene pool, that will be extremely hard to figure out what is what....

 

[Tony]

It's going to be like Bruno "spicerianum" and Pinocchio "primulinum", the true species will no longer be awardable after the first handful of awards are granted.

 

[Kalyke]

With all the cooks in the kitchen, do you have a chance of maintaining genetic purity?

 

[SlipperKing]

So, is the 'Kuang Hua Village' clone contaminated as well?

 

[emydura]

So, is the 'Kuang Hua Village' clone contaminated as well?

I wouldn't have thought so Rick. That clone was awarded in 2009, which predates these sky roths.

 

[spujr]

They are roths and should be considered and judged as roth. That's what breeding is. A bell pepper crossed to a habenero to incorporate disease resistance and then backcrossed n generations to bell peppers is judged as a bell pepper.

 

[Tony]

They are roths and should be considered and judged as roth. That's what breeding is. A bell pepper crossed to a habenero to incorporate disease resistance and then backcrossed n generations to bell peppers is judged as a bell pepper.

But they're not roths, they're a roths/stonei hybrid.

 

[spujr]

Roths!

 

[Tony]

Roths!

So we just throw away almost 200 years of breeding records and start just calling plants whatever we feel like calling them? No thanks.

 

[spujr]

So we just throw away almost 200 years of breeding records and start just calling plants whatever we feel like calling them? No thanks.

Given the scandals and doubtful characters in that 200 year orchid breeding history can we really trust it?

A system that is reliant on human honesty is on shaky grounds to begin with.

Even if we genotyped a large number of wild roth plants and said, "this molecular profile declares what a true roth should be", I doubt most cultured roth would meet the criteria due to selection, mutation, and inbreeding.

That said, I do agree with you, we shouldn't just call plants whatever we feel like. It is a tricky dilemma with no simple answer. It might be entirely possible through true line breeding to produce a roth with the size of these sunlight roths but genetically speaking you are probably selecting for the same mutations that occurred a long time ago in stoneii, so the end result is both phenotypically and genetically the same.

At what point does a pepper C. annuum no longer be a pepper? Or a bulldog no longer a bulldog?

 

[SelectOrchids]

Honestly, many breeding records are bogus... I had access to some Phalaenopsis real breeding books, including in Taiwan, and we see things like 'Cut flower Mr.XXXXXX' as the origin of a plant with a parent number. Later, that parent number was registered by the RHS with bogus parents and a nice name, and it is a very, very famous one. The competing nursery eventually got as well cut flowers from Europe, and did the same thing. To say that both NoID are some of the most famous white phals in the world is an understatement...

You have that as well:

https://orchidroots.com/detail/100156428/hybrid/?tab=sum
and

https://www.orchidroots.com/detail/100161385/hybrid_detail/?type=hybrid&tab=sum&att=

Which pedigree do you prefer for the same plant, after all ? They were both submitted for a PBR to use as mass pot plant varieties, and turned out that they are the absolute same variety...

The TRUE origin of the plant was mass cloning of a pure pink variety, that turned out to produce that mutation, a bit like the Big Lip or Harlequins single ancestors...

Complex paphs, the spotted ones, the leading breeder of them is in Germany since a very long time, but for pot plant... So for about 20 years, people have been fed Complex paphs in Japan and the USA, even some of them got awards, some are offered for few thousands dollars in Japan, but they are all complex NoID. The parentage is done as 'well it looks a bit like this times that, let's put it and register it'.

I saw a batch leaving to Japan in January this year as an example... and let's say I saw the plants and flowers photos at the Tokyo Dome, but they were not anymore Complex pot plants for Lidl. There were both spotted and white complex paphs.

As for the roths, I like the Sunlight Sky Roths a lot, I have to say. Some are absolutely gorgeous, there is no doubt, and they would have the same financial value to me as a roth...

A chihuahua x rottweiler would not be judged as either, as a fact... On the genetics problem and that it just incorporates some genes, I don't think so at all. It incorporates clusters from the other species, on one side. Plus, the mother plant transmits the mitochondrial DNA 100%, there is no 'breeding' there.

So if these Sunlight Sky Roths used stonei, then the hybrid as parents, as motherplants, they have full blown stonei mitochondrial DNA, none of roth. They cannot be used to reintroduce the species, eventually they will wipe out the real species in cultivation ( real paph primulinum has not been collected since at least 40 years... and there should be less than 5 people who have the real one in the world, completely different from the Pinnochio yellow sold by the Orchid Zone as primulinum 4n, that did spread worldwide...), and losing some gene pool.

At a point it is cheating, at least on the hobby market.

For the commercial Cymbidium, Phalaenopsis varieties, we never, ever release the exact pedigree ( no need to help the competition), so you have Anthura Narbonne, Anthura Montpellier, etc... In those, using NoID or a lot of weird parents is OK. Not if people sells something as the real species and guarantee they are 'pure' roths...

 

[Ozpaph]

deceit is always deceit

 

[Tony]

Given the scandals and doubtful characters in that 200 year orchid breeding history can we really trust it?

A system that is reliant on human honesty is on shaky grounds to begin with.

It's still a better system than what is in place for any other family of plants and I don't think that it should be abandoned just because of a relatively small number of dishonest people. Especially in the case of Sunlight Sky Roths, we know for a fact that they are hybrids and we shouldn't just start calling all of the ones that pass a roths just because some people have already.

 

[tnyr5]

So, is the 'Kuang Hua Village' clone contaminated as well?

I wouldn't mind knowing the provenance of 'Kuang Hua Village', either, regardless of whether or not its children are actually its children.

 

[Paph Paradise]

They are roths and should be considered and judged as roth. That's what breeding is. A bell pepper crossed to a habenero to incorporate disease resistance and then backcrossed n generations to bell peppers is judged as a bell pepper.

As a breeder who works hard to keep my species lines 'pure', this is a disappointing comment. If you present a plant with stonei DNA as a roth you, you are in effect, cheating. Yes, the plants may grow faster and have more impressive color, but they are not roths. If the species was to be wiped out in situ, how could you use these to repopulate the habitat? Would the pollinator even recognize it?

We already have fake spicerianum and primulinum dominating the market. A customer that I know well proudly brought me a huge 'charlesworthii' plant at a show that he had just purchased...it was a hybrid. We screened a 'hirsutissimum' at judging last weekend that was also a hybrid (if we had scored it we would have sent it to SITF to confirm). If we keep accepting these forgeries it won't take long for real species to become a rarity in the hobby.

Dave