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| Tolumnia with double spike |
Is the rare double spike on Tolumnia genetic or culture?
I've found 5-6 plants that have two flower spikes on the same fan. That's 5-6 out of 11,000 plants. If it is genetic, we need to select for this trait. If it's just good growing health of the plant, we should learn how to do that.
If anybody out there knows the answer, please tell me.
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| Tolumnia 'Peppered Sunlight' Is this the future of Tolumnia Orchids? Eight flower bud count, two spikes per fan. Will tissue culture mericlones duplicate this? |
The last story introduced a Tolumnia with potential for promotion.
Now we have a name that could help --- 'Peppered Sunlight'. The name came from Kerri. I like it. It describes speckled bright yellow.
This plant is a one-in-four thousand find. It has good characteristics. It has vigor and high bud count --- eight flowers per spike.
It is one of those rare double spikes per fan --- three in 11,000. Nobody knows if this double spike is culture or genetic. Nobody knows if the double spike would carry through in the tissue culture process? The flower stem is strong and thick. The flower stem is very tall, but acceptable.
Is this 'Peppered Sunlight' worth entering it into tissue culture?
If I had a thousand of these, would they be valuable?
This Tolumnia has several special traits, but is it pretty enough to be selected for tissue culture production?
Propagation by tissue culture is very expensive and time consuming so only the most promising clones should be selected for this effort.
If this were a named variety and promoted as a very special small flowering houseplant, would customers buy it because it is stunning?
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| Tolumnia with large flower |
Seedling
worth watching
This Tolumnia flower is bigger than others, so far. It’s from the hybrid seedlings group imported in September 2024. There is the chance that it is bigger due to culture as opposed to genetic.
It also happens to be the ‘Double-spike’ plant.
Is this how award-winning Orchids are
discovered? I don’t have any reference
as to how this compares to other Tolumnia in the Orchid world.
The plan is to grow for several years
and see if it is truly exceptional.
Hide and watch!
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| Tolumnia one fan, two spikes |
Imagine if it were true.
If Tolumnia Orchids produced two flowering spikes per fan
growth, it would revolutionize small Orchids.
The last story showed that it
happened once.
I’ve found another one in the
picture… one fan, two spikes.
If the ‘Double-spike’ trait is real and can be crossed into the
highest awarded hybrids, the plant world will be a better place.
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| Tolumnia with two spikes on one fan |
I’m
learning how Tolumnia Orchids flower.
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Flowering is the only thing that counts in flowering houseplants. A single fan only flowers once, then
a side fan must grow to give the next flower. What if
we could get each fan to have two flower spikes?
These pictures show that it can happen --- Two spikes per growth. This is a
hybrid seedling; therefore, a unique combination of characteristics can
occur. Could it be that this plant has a
gene that causes it to have two flower spikes per fan growth? It will take years of observation to see if this rare flowering ever repeats as a stable characteristic. |
