AWARDED PHAL. SPECIES

[littlefrog]

Awesome research. And it is very interesting that the species see a lot of representation in the top 100. I'm trying to digest what that means, but it is very interesting...

[Phantasm]

I had an unintended omission from my posting. The awards I examined were flower quality awards only and did not include culture awards, CBM, CHM or JC awards.
Usually CHM (certificate of horticultural merit) or CBM are awarded the first time a plant is judged to get it on record for a reference point. Sometimes, however it is awarded for horticulturally different forms of species such as unique color forms or peloric flowers.

Cultural awards can be awarded to both species and hybrids, but my guess is that a few more are given to species due to specific spiking habits of plants like leuddemannia, pulchra, mariae, etc that bloom forever on the same inflorescence.

All of the CBM and CHM awards would be species.....

[Oscarman]

Great information Phantasm! Thanks for the input.

[David Morris]

Okay, can't help myself. We often assume line breeding with out knowning what has actually taken place. I know that the stuartianas and the schillerianas have been line bred, to the point where we question if they are species anymore (for example if I cross amabils with schilleriana and lose a tag on a very pink schilleriana looking thing I might assume it is a good schilleriana and "Line Breed" it on.) such things cannot really be proved, but if the morphology or other distinct charecteristic is different than you can assume that it is not pure. However the bellinus (violacea) line breeding has appeared pure when I have seen it, and over the years I have seen the commercial hybridizer offering their seedlings so my assumption there is that they are indeed line bred. I cannot make the same assumption for gigantea though as it is probably not more than 2 generations from jungle plants, and too few plants to pick from when you reach flowering size. Also I have only received 1 award for a Phalaenopsis, it was a species, it was quality (Hcc) and it was a jungle plant that I had for 15 years (Phal. lobbii).

[Phantasm]

Of course, you can't assume line breeding without knowing whether the plant is a product of an artificial cross or from nature. An educated guess will tell you that at the present levels of quality, many species are line bred.
In phals, I would guess that plants like amabilis, amboinensis, equestris, stuartiana and violacea/bellina are most likely to be line bred. Finding seed grown gigantea is not common, so I'm not so sure about that.
As it becomes more difficult to import orchids, it is even more likely that future species will be produced in labs rather than nature for cultivation.

Discerning whether a line bred species is 100% true is difficult in some circumstances and only a review of the genetics would varify that. The odds are that, if the morphology was wrong, the plant is a hybrid.

At times, these are difficult matters to sort out as a judge and experience is the best teacher. That being said, I've seen errors in the past and will see more in the future.