Essay about color forms in Guarianthe aurantica.
Almost all Guarianthe aurantiaca in natural populations are orange in color. This orange could be better described has a “yellow-orange” that vary only in terms of hue and intensity. The species is not to much variable at all at least in wild populations.
The other color present in G. Aurantiaca is the lip pattern, which is purple. This color pattern is represented by few little “dots” that follows “imaginary” lines between each other, but sometimes the lip is so well spotted that tight “radial” patterns occur. Has I said before spots don’t occur randomly and they are never big, so large random "stains" like in G aurantica “mishima spots” are 100% sure that occurs thanks to artificial back-crossings to aurantica, but since many reputable growers don’t now the species at all, they easily accept man-made complex hybrids with "aurantica" fenotipe has it were true "novel" auranticas.
Also It has been said that aurantiacas with no lip pattern at all or “concolor” are not common but possible to occur and that is true, also “splash” aurantacas are not common, but the later are very randomly seen on cultivation because “splash” auranticas are not collectible items since they only have quite few tiny “dots” on the two petals (quite less than in the labellum) that only a close look would reveal.
The way “auranticas” can vary in color is because of some degree of “alien” genes on wild populations (In this species case via “guatemalensis”). The natural hybrid between skinneri and aurantiaca is quite common in almost half of the aurantica distribution range, and for some genetic reason this hybrid have the ability to produce reds, yellows,whites and salmon colors when is back crossed with aurantiaca.
Since almost all “pure” auranticas from places that guatemalensis occur actually have few alien genes from some guatemalensis back-cross, chances are that even if “pure auranticas” have near 100% “purity level”, sometimes this so-call “pure” aurantiacas would produce some reds, yellows or even white cultivars. This is know not only because we know how guatemalensis behave, but also because in places guatemalensis don’t exist only orange auranticas are possible to be found.
Since in this particular case is normal that few genes from “skinneri” travels to “aurantica”, aurantiaca color variability is recognized has part of the true species because even orange plants could be in some degree "hybrids", and for that reason even red or yellow aurantiacas are recognized has true especies, something that happens ONLY if the shape and flower size are 100% aurantica in phenotype and their offspring still behaves has "aurantica"… all the rest are classified has part of the guatemalensis hybrid “swarm”.
On cultivation “white” aurantiacas are possible to obtain if yellow cultivars are selfed for more than one generation and on “each” step only the more cream colored plants are selfed again. On the other hand “red” behaves quite strange, red selfings not only produce the expected variability between “salmon red”, “brick red”, to “burgundy red”, they also produce various types of yellow, in fact red selfings produces more yellow than red offspring. Maybe on the future if "salmon red" aurantiacas are selfed we would see true "salmon" inside aurantiaca, true salmon is the only color of guatemalensis that have more aurantica genes on it that actually don't have known representatives inside "pure" aurantiacas with few guatemalensis genes on it.
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