Paph IQ 6

[Jmoney]

oh absolutely, you get the outliers with any cross, some with unusually short petals, and some with much longer than expected. people had been speculating that selfing PEOY or crossing two primary sandy hybrids would have an increased percentage of loooooong petals (I guess they were hoping for simple mendelian genetics if you assume looooooong petals are one gene, which is doubtful); I still don't know how that turned out.

[Hoa Tony Nguyen]

Hi Jason,
Of course we only want certain outliers in which the desired traits are retained or amplified. SO for sandy crosses, short petals are for the salad shooter, and the long petals ones are to be kept. Crossing PEOY or two sandy primary hybrids, whether this trick will result in more long petal progeny I don't know although I think it might. Mendelian genetics is a good place to start eventhough it is doubtful that a single gene controls the length of the petals in paphs. Even if the petal length is controlled by more than one gene, but if during meiosis and fertilization (i.e. recombination), they are inherited without any domain swapping, we could consider these genes or DNA loci as a single 'de facto' gene. I do notice that lately vendors have started selling these two primary sandy crosses. I would be very curious to see how they turn out. The question is should we try our luck and buy some of these seedlings before their prices become exorbitant?
Cheers. Hoa.

[Piper]

Interesting questions, Hoa...

I just missed on a flask of Lawless Sand x sand seedlings. That would have likely provided the traits you sought.

I think that's the answer to the question - reinforce the desired traits by crossing back to the said parent. Breeders are doing this, but sand breeding is still so nascent, we're only just seeing the early results.

Julie

[Jmoney]

or we could just do things the EASY way and have lots and lots of quality sandy seedlings for cheap. it took them way too long to do this (no thanks to Mr. Root and other sanderianum goons) but it's starting to happen.

[Piper]

I spoke with one sand breeder, and he said he's been growing sand seedlings for ten years, but for the first five he couldn't get seeds to germinate. He's worked that out now, but he didn't explain exactly what the problems were.

Julie

[Hoa Tony Nguyen]

The problem with growing sand seedlings is that they grow sooooo SLOW! I have been growing them for like 2 years plus now and boy I can tell you, they are finicky and soooo darn slow. It is clear that breeders must do more sandy line-breeding to weed out weak plants and keep only the robust/better flower plants. And that sounds like work for decades!
We are interested in sandy hybrids for other reasons as well. For exmaple, we do want to impart the interesting features of sanderianum to other lovely paph species. Just imagine, a stonei-style lady slipper (more white with bold rose stripe) with super long petals, i.e. Lady Isabel with sandy petals, that would be so lovely, at least from my opinion! Or a gorgeous bright yellow with super long petals. Just think about all those possibilities ...

[bench72]

A grower here in Oz said that he keeps his Sandy seedlings in temp over 18celsius year round and they keep growing... so it might be a temp issue whilst they are younger...

[Jmoney]

we also need a FAST-growing strain of stonei! (or, if not fast, then not super-slow like most of the strains we have now)

[Hoa Tony Nguyen]

Jason,
You are right, we do need a fast growing strain of stonei as well. However, since this species has been around for a long time, it is easier to get larger size plants. I have stonei as well, they seems to chugg along and at least I can notice they they are doing some growing. From what I have observed so far, this species might be a warm-to-intermediate grower.

Tim, thanks for the tip. 18 celsius is around 65 F, so that means sandy are warm grower. That is what I have been suspecting. I notice that in my GH, the sandy don't do much growing during the winter (when day temp is in the 70s F), but after a few heat spell lately (80-85 F), the leaves of my sandy get bigger noticeably! I also had some sandy seedling in my office window (temperature is always above 72 F but very stable), these guys also grow very slow. So I think sandy might be a warm grower but not that warm (like vanda, maybe more like phal) and might need temperature differentiation between day and night and high light level.
Cheers. Hoa.