I'll tell you. Growing orchids from flask is hard. At least for me. I have a greenhouse and everything, but i have trouble with tiny plants. I much prefer growing them from community pots or mini flats. If you want to grow a good sized population of a hybrid or species. Frankly, I don't have the room to do that anymore. If you end up having 20 or more plants of the same grex, you have to expect them to reach at least a 4" pot size or more for them to bloom. That takes up space. And then really cull the plants down as they flower. Take notes on each plant. If the flower is just average, give it away (I throw them away, sounds severe, but I look for award quality blooms). There are a number of orchid nurseries that offer community flats like Carmela or Carter & Holmes.

Get 2 goats, Lori. I decided to move it as the developing spike needed more head room and in the process broke it offffffffff....... I tool around with a very convenient handicap tag on my car, not because I'm handicapped but because my son in law is an orthopedic surgeon. Do they have MENTAL HANDICAP TAGS for a clutz like me? The only good thing about it is that at my age next year will be here so fast it will seem like tomorrow. You are aware that life is like a roll of toilet paper, the closer it gets to the end the faster it rolls. Maybe I should post 'crying, moaning, groaning and venting, Episode 9.' Or are we up to 10? Nick

I think the cost of registering an orchid hybrid with the Royal Horticultural Society is still Ten Pounds and there are something like 100,000 of those registered hybrids. There is no register of clone names because of the sheer numbers involved. A friend did some breeding with one of my orchids and we got back ten flasks of orchid seedlings, and as you say each one of little plants is genetically different. I think about 50 of them will bloom this year. I might give those that turn out OK a name but the i'm not going to bother with most of them. SO A x B = C (C being the registered the name that i paid Ten Pounds to get) All the seedlings are C Selected ones might get a clone name. If they are worth keeping and i want to keep track of them in my collection. In the unlikely event that one of the gets an Award From the AOS I would have to supply a clone name. C 'No.1' C 'No.2' C 'Aunty Flo C 'Anything You like" EXCEPT some clone names that are only restricted by Convention, such as 'Orchidglade' 'Hildos'' 'Carmela' and should not be used by us mere mortals That is enough Rocket Science stuff for now.

Polina, Volumes have been written to answer your last paragraph. ;Arthurm, you think they will give me enough room here to try? It used to be that there were two types of really expensive orchids. One group was rare, very hard to find plants that were brought out of the wild and only a very few of them were in cultivation any where in the world. The others were those plants that had been hybridized by man over sometimes many generations to create exceptionally shaped blooms, or blooms with exceptional color, or both. These plants had been shown to highly trained judges who were accredited by recognized organizations such as the Royal Horticultural Society of England, or the American Orchid Society, and granted awards recognizing their superiority. When two orchids are crossed (pollen from one applied to the stigma of the other) a seed pod may be formed that can contain nearly a million almost microscopic seeds. If these seeds are planted on a nutrient material (agar, something near the consistency of Jell-O) in a sterile environment (to prevent mold contamination), each seed can produce a baby plant. Each of these little plants are unique...some will resemble mom, some dad, and most will be somewhere in between. Some may inherit and exhibit a trait from some ancestor many generations back. After about 7 years these plants will begin to bloom, and experienced growers pick the finest ones out of the multitude of first blooming seedlings. These plants are usually allowed to bloom once or twice more to confirm their characteristics before they are entered in shows or taken to judgings. Once the plants begin to bloom, the cross can be named. The process looks like this...Cattleya Plant A X (crossed by) Laelia Plant B = Laeliocattleya John Doe. (Lc. John Doe must never have been registered before) Now all these little plants that came out of that seed pod have the same name. If, in America one of those selected little plants is taken to a show, and the American Orchid Society judges there agree that it is exceptional, they can award it. Lets say they give it an Award of Merit. Now, the owner has the right to give that individual plant a "clonal name"...It now might become Laeliocattleya John Doe Variety 'My Best' AM/AOS. Now, that one particular plant has been singled out as better than its siblings, and has a name that defines it from all its siblings. Before Cloning was perfected, the only way you could obtain a plant of LC John Doe Var. "My Best" AM/AOS would be to purchase it from the owner. That usually would not happen, but the owner might consent to selling you a division or part of the plant once it grew large enough to be divided. I have personally seen divisions sold for as high as $3,000.00. Once cloning was perfected, a piece of our pant in question could be taken into the lab, and multiplied many hundreds of times, producing exact genetic copies of the original plant, and now, blooming sized plants of this plant can be purchased for $15 - $20.00. If you wanted to, you could purchase at very reasonable prices two plants with excellent breeding records, cross them, wait for them (7 yrs.) to begin to bloom, and if your cross had not been registered previously, you could name the cross, and take the best of the bunch to shows and see if you could get them awarded, clone (could probably begin to sell plants in flasks in about 2 years) them and make your fortune selling them. Kinda changes a fun hobby into lots of hard work, doesn't it. Bill