Today was the first day of our fall Orchid Society show and sale. (I got first place in at least one category - pics later).
Our guest speaker is Curtis Gene, expert in west coast native orchids and AOS judge. I spent the day gleaning information. One of the topics was a piece of pathetic Cattleya that he had brought. He says this is a piece of the original named plant so for sure whatever it is (sorry forgot) will bloom in the original colors. Hmmmm.....
The interesting part: So someone crosses two orchids and has a whole flask (or several flasks) of this cross and they choose one and give it a name and it is the mother plant.
Then they start Mericloning this plant. So far so good. What Curtis says is that what has happened is that people have taken the Mericloned plants and made mericlones. But that second generation doesn't come true to the original plant. His lesson learned was don't accept 2nd generation mericlones because they will be different that the original.
Have you ever heard this before?
