Tanie51, May I take a shot at answering your question about orchid "remakes".....the answer is, Maybe...Maybe yes, maybe no.

a quick (not short) run through of orchid breeding and genetics will, I hope, make that answer a bit clearer.

Lets say you have two orchid plants that are genetically close enough to breed, and you want to do just that. Lets say the two plants, and their blooms are a great deal different from each other (one has white flowers, the other lavender...One is a large robust plant, the other small and rather dainty...and on, and on, and on, through the multitude of differences between these two plants)

When you cross these two plants, lets say you get a nice healthy seed pod, so now you are the proud owner of perhaps well over a million tiny tiny little orchid seeds.

Should you desire to "plant" all these seeds, and should you (you won't) get, say 50% germination, you now have a whole bunch of tiny little orchid plants on your hands.

The mind boggling fact about all these little plants is that EVERY ONE of them is going to be different from its parents, and its siblings. Some of these little plants will grow up and produce white blooms...Some will bloom with lavender, but most will be something in between. Some of these plants will be large and robust, and others will be small and dainty, but most will fall somewhere in between. If one of the parents is dominant for a trait, and the other recessive for the trait, then the number of seedlings with the dominant trait will be more than the recessive. Understand there are hundreds and hundreds of different genetic traits that will be exhibited like this throughout all the little seedlings.

If you have gotten this far into the process, and spent the money necessary to get this far along, you must be a sizeable commercial grower, so you are very interested in marketing these little seedlings ASAP. You will begin to sell the seedlings in flasks (perhaps 25-50 plants per.), then as they grow larger, you may market them in community pots (5-10 plants per), and then into 2.5 inch pots, and so on, and on, as they grow up.

The reality is that you really have no way of knowing what these seedlings will turn out to be, so your marketing pitch should begin something like "We expect this cross of "&&& X @@@" to produce $$$." These sales statements are based on your study of the breeding habits of both the parents, and should include consideration of the breeding habits of each parents' parents, and their grand parents back several generations, if you are a serious breeder.

These plants get sold literally all over the world. A good representative number will be kept by the breeder, so when they bloom, he can pick choice plants to carry on with the breeding line, if the quality of the bloomss warrant.

Most will be purchased by other growers who recognize the potential for quality blooms, based in part on the reputation of the hybridizer who made the cross. A great number of plants will be purchased by serious hobby growers (not grocery store shoppers) who are looking for quality plants to show, and/or increase the value of their collections.

Until these little seedlings begin to bloom, they will be recognized simply as (the name of the pollen parent "&&&" X The name of the pod parent"@@@").

As a sizable number of plants bloom, the hybridizer may choose to name the cross, so he does the necessary paperwork and submits the cross and proposed name to the Royal Horticulture Society in England. If there has never been a cross using these exact parents, and no cross of that species has ever been named the exact proposed name, they will approve the name.

Now, every one of those plants that came out of that seed pod, all those years ago have a name. Whether the owners know it, or even care about it, the plants have a name.

Lets say the cross is a Phalaenopsis, and the hybridizer chose the name "John Smith's Sweetheart". All our little plants are now "Phalaenopsis John Smith's Sweetheart".

To help make a long story shorter, lets say that this cross has turned out overall to be a real knockout. Over the years, lots of them have been shown at American Orchid Society shows, and been awarded. If you have one of these plants, and it was awarded, say an "Award of Merit" by the AOS. You now have the privilege of naming your individual plant. Your plant could now become "Phalaenopsis John Smith's Sweetheart 'tanie's best' AM/AOS". Your plant, of all those thousands of plants that came from the same seed pod has now been specifically recognized as superior to most of its siblings, and named in a manner that sets it apart from all the others. Many other people have also had this privilege of recognizing their plants with unique names.

Now, lets say that I am a small commercial orchid nursery, with access to a plant propigation lab, and I know how well the cross of "&&& X @@@ = Phal. John Smith's Sweetheart" turned out to be, and I think I could sell a bunch of them if I could get them. No one has a lot of seedlings that I can purchase cheap, so what do I do?

If I could get pieces (divisions or clones) of the exact plants that were used to make the original cross, I could cross them and expect to get results very close to the original cross, and since all of my seedlings would automatically be Phal. John Smith's Sweetheart, I could sell them at a premium price and have lots of happy customers.

But, there are no blooming sized clones of these original plants, and you, the original breeder doesn't have, or won't sell me, or I can't afford, divisions of these exact plants, so what to do?

Well, one option that I might choose would be to obtain plants of &&&, and @@@, from someplace, and cross them. The offspring of this cross would still be Phal. John Smith's Sweetheart, but would the quality of the offspring be the same as the original cross? Who knows?

And I could certainly legitimately, and moraly, sell these seedlings as a remake of the original cross, so long as I did not attempt to falsely market them as offspring of the specific clones of the original parents. My cross could be better than the original cross, or a complete waste of time. I should feel a moral responsibility to inform my customers of the facts of the remake, however, if I feel that one or both of the plants I used had superior traits than the ones you used, I could state that fact.

Does all this rambling give you a better understanding of what you might be getting in a "remade" cross?

I hope so.

Are remakes the same quality as originals? The answer is still....Maybe, Maybe yes, maybe no.
Bill