Bulbophyllum Binnendijiki x sib. In spike?
 

I bought this little guy about a month ago and just noticed this possible spike .

The bulb. binnendijkii has such delightful flowers! Looks like you have a new growth to me:) It might need to do some growing up first as it looks rather small in the pics (how big are the leaves?). I haven’t been able to bloom mine yet but I’ve barely had it 2 years and I feel like we are still getting to know one another

I think it's a miniature version or something? It's a x sib hybrid.

Sorry, I’m a little confused:) Does the tag say bulbophyllum binnendijiki x sib? Or does it say something about a hybrid? If it is just bulbophyllum binnendijiki x sib, that means it is simply a sibling cross. Read it like this: bulbophyllum binnendijiki crossed with sibling. So the name of the plant does not change and (in this case) it is still considered a pure species, not a hybrid. I believe this is called line breeding, someone correct me if I’m wrong, which is used to get the “best” characteristics be it: flower color, size, ect... so I don’t think yours is a mini, just a young orchid.

Yes it does say x sib. Sorry. Am new to orchids and misused the word hybrid. I meant it was a hybrid of itself. Maybe I just don’t understand what x sib means lol

Oh honey, when it comes to orchids we are all learning:lol: :lol: I will put some examples below but hopefully this will help with the lingo. When two different species are crossed that is hybrid, and more specifically, a primary hybrid. When you cross two hybrids or cross a hybrid with another species you still have a hybrid, or a complex hybrid orchid. If you are simply crossing two orchids of the same species, you still have a species orchid. When looking at the names, the species name is spelled with a lowercase such as binnendijkii (correct) vs. Binnendijkii (incorrect). A hybrid name is capitalized like the bulbophyllum Elizabeth Ann. It may seem like a silly sticking point but it can help keep things straight. :greenthumb:

Examples

Bulbophyllum binnendijkii x sib (the sib just means sibling and the ‘x’ stands for ‘crossed with’)
Parents: bulb. binnendijkii x bulb. binnendijkii
So this is still a species


Bulbophyllum Elizabeth Ann
Parents: bulb. longissimum x bulb. rothschildianum

Bulbophyllum A-doribil Candy
Parents: bulb. Elizabeth Ann x bulb. bicolor

The genus of a plant is always capitalized. The species name is now not capitalized (but it was not always so.) A hybrid name is always capitalized. This is one way to tell if a plant is a species or a hybrid.

Your plant is written Bulbophyllum binnendijkii because it is a naturally-occurring species. You have to take care not to write it with a capital on the second name or people will think it's a hybrid. For example, Bulbophyllum A-Doribil Candy Ann is a hybrid with several species in the ancestry.

A grower may decide a given plant of either a species or hybrid is exceptional, and give it a name. This is called the clonal name. It is capitalized, and written in single quotations. The originator of the hybrid Bulbophyllum A-Doribil Candy Ann exhibited one of the seedlings, and it received an Award of Merit from the America Orchid Society. He gave the clone a name, 'Parasol'. All divisions or meristems propagated from this individual plant carry the same clonal name, Bulbophyllum A-Doribil Candy Ann 'Parasol' AM/AOS.

Using the plant's own pollen on the plant's own stigmatic surface to set seed on itself is called selfing a plant. This is written on a name tag as x self. The seedlings will be different from the parent. They will be the same species or hybrid as the parent, but they do not carry the parent's clonal name. If you have pieces of the same plant growing in different pots, and you take pollen from one piece and put it onto the stigmatic surface of another piece, it is still a selfing. The parents are genetically identical.

A sibling cross is made with two genetically distinct plants of the same species, or same named hybrid. For example, if you cross Bulbophyllum A-Doribil Candy Ann 'Parasol' with a different seedling Bulbophyllum A-Doribil Candy Ann, the progeny would still be called Bulbophyllum A-Doribil Candy Ann. If you cross two different seedlings of the species Cattleya labiata, the tag will say x self, and the progeny will all be of the species Cattleya labiata.

Crossing plants of two different species makes a hybrid. The person flowering a hybrid for the first time names the cross. The population of hybrid seedlings is called a grex, and the name is referred to as the grex name. All subsequent pollinations of the same two parents are given the same grex name, no matter which parent was the pollen and which the pod parent.

For example, if you cross a plant of Cattleya labiata with a plant of Cattleya dowiana, the progeny are given the grex name Cattleya Fabia.

A hybrid can also be a cross between two different hybrids, or one species plant and one hybrid plant.

Sometimes a breeder will cross two different individuals of the same species, or same hybrid, that have good flowers. They may put the clonal names of the parents on the tag to show the seedlings have outstanding ancestry.

That was very informative. Thanks! What is the purpose of making a x sib plant versus a x self? Are the plants I have Just seedlings?

"siblings", even if they have the same parents (species or hybrid) are not genetically identical. Same concept as with people... (ok, it's incestuous, but these are plants...) A "sib" cross would hope to gain the best features of both of the plants used to make a "better" version of the species or hybrid. Pollinating a plant with its own pollen would hope to maintain (preserve) the genetic characteristics of an outstanding individual plant. It's not a clone... genetics are complex enough that the selfing will be close to, but not necessarily identical to, the original. So the "x sib" is genetically more diverse than the "x self". Depends on what the breeder is seeking.

In the case of species, breeders are typically looking to "improve" the flower toward some sort of standard (such as bigger, rounder, more overlap of petals, depth of color, etc.) through line breeding - selecting the "best" examples as parents and sort of amplifying the characteristics that are considered desirable. The result is still a species, but sometimes gets so far from the species as it occurs in nature, I wonder if the pollinator would still recognize it if it were placed back in the wild.

Evolutionary biology teaches that wild populations of species with a very wide range of genetic variability amongst individuals are more likely to have individuals that might survive and reproduce if the environment changes. This variability can sometimes be seen by us in populations of plants as populations with a lot of variation in height, leaf shape, size, flower size, number, color.... But there is also variability in things we don't see, like frost tolerance, growth rate, overall vigor, resistance to disease.

Populations that have been reduced to just a few individuals at some time in the past generally have much less genetic variability among the individuals. If, among the few individuals of a hypothetical plant species that survived, the genes for yellow flowers do not exist, then no plants of that species in the future will have yellow flowers.

Also, harmful mutations occur from time to time among all populations. Many lead to non-viable embryos that don't mature to reproduce. But because organisms have two copies of each chromosome (plants can have more) many organisms can survive with one good copy of the gene on one chromosome and one bad copy on the other chromosome of the pair. Since most lethal mutations are uncommon, in a large population few organisms will have the mutation.

However, in a very small population that breeds among itself, more and more offspring will have these lethal mutations. When this happens the number of offspring produced decreases, sometimes drastically.

Cheetahs are an example of this. They are very infertile, in the wild or in zoos, and are at risk of going extinct. There are two small populations left, too far apart to interbreed. By doing genetic analysis, it is thought one population was reduced to perhaps seven individuals at some time in the past. The descendant cheetahs are essentially genetically identical because the small population has been inbreeding for so long. It is possible to perform organ transplants from any cheetah in the population to any other, without anti-rejection drugs. But harmful mutations have also accumulated, leading to the low fertility.

When human orchid breeders self plants, or breed among only a limited number of individuals, characteristics can be brought out in the population. For example, if a breeder has 10 Cattleya labiata, and only crosses the two with the best form, it is likely the offspring will have better form than if other individuals had been bred. Now if the breeder again looks at all the progeny of the first breeding, and again only crosses the two individual with best form... and continues this generation after generation... it is likely the resulting seedlings will have better form than any of their ancestors. This process is how we got almost all our fruits and vegetables. The ancestral plants were tiny and had very low productivity. People have understood line breeding for millennia.

But this also preserves harmful mutations. If the breeder is only paying attention to flower shape, the breeder might ignore the plants becoming very weak growers and having a tendency to die easily. So good breeders focus not only on form, but also vigor. And a sterile plant that doesn't produce offspring may have great flowers, but if it can't breed, it isn't of any use improving the plants.

So improving plants is a balance between line breeding, to fix good characteristics, and introducing new genetics from time to time, to improve vigor. Problems arise in some orchids because only one, or just a few, clones were ever brought into cultivation, and all plants of that species now grown are very closely related to each other. This is the same situation as with the cheetahs.