I'm just wondering if the available computer databases of awards also record the clonal names of parents.
That may not be as helpful as you think. It is a quirk of biology that two individuals may or may not always breed winners. Two other award quality but not necessarily prize-winning parents from the same grexes might produce just as good or better offspring. Don't discount the effects of culture. If a population from a cross of two certain clones is sold primarily to sophisticated aficionados, it is bound to produce a higher percentage of winners than the same cross from other clones sold in Home Depot.
I had this B. nodosa seedling from a cross of two highly awarded parents, & it was a loser.
I have a Paph. concolor, a collected plant 20 years old, that won best in class with 4 flowers & one bud on 2 stems. It is just as good as one from a selected cross that was given to me 10 years ago.
It is an old axiom among dog & cat breeders that a sibling of a highly awarded champion may be a better parent than the prize winner himself. The general bloodlines and genetic match are often more important than a particular clone.
A well-known Paph speaker (I forget his name) told a story about a visit to a highly acclaimed breeder in Taiwan or Japan. This breeder had crossed two selected clones of two highly awarded hybrids, with the hopes of producing a super-Paph. The result was so horrible that he kept one of the seedlings behind a curtain in his greenhouse, presumably as an antidote to excessive hubris.
Every so often, you read ads for a remake of a classic hybrid, with the exact same clonal parents. You also read ads for old hybrids, especially primaries, remade with "improved" parents. Then there are three or four generation line-bred offspring. Has anyone done any research on how these forms of breeding actually turn out?
Iris
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