Hi Lisa,

Being one of those confused people you mentioned, I have to side with both yourself and Andy. The confusion comes from what appears to be frequently variable and inappropriate use of terminology. So, to establish "clearly defined areas of doubt and uncertainty" (sorry, I've just been re-reading Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy):

If the name O. b-m v. Seabrae was indeed established to identify a true botanical variety, ie to identify a variable wild population that formed a sub-group within a species, then you certainly could expect quite a significant amount of variation in the offspring when it was selfed and you would be entirely correct in retaining the v. Seabrae epithet.

However, if it was actually the case where someone applied the v. Seabrae epithet to an individual plant that stood out from the crowd, because it stood out from the crowd, (which is what I suspect happens in many cases), then the name has been established to represent a wild-growing plant that is the biological equivalent of cultivar, it is not a botanical variety regardless of whether someone stuck a v. in the name, and it would be inappropriate to give the same name to seedling offspring because it would imply close similarity to the parent when in fact this may not be the case for the vast majority.

The problem is, what happened with this one? Was the name originally applied to a variable wild population, or to a wild-growing individual plant displaying selected extremes of variation? Who knows? Whoever that is, is the only person that can answer your question, Lisa.

I'm used to being moderately confused a fair bit of the time, but this is why use of the term 'variety' in this context drives me nuts. It is junk terminology and should be put down. Kill it someone, pppplease ......

Cheers, Paul

Hmmm...... okay, thanks Nick. The picture shown doesn't look much like my plant, though, so maybe Chanin's natural hybrid theory has merit.

If the link doesn't work, I have hard copy I can run through Photobucket too (maybe..... I've been having a hard time with PB lately).

Here is a link that might be useful: BSI Journal archives

Sorry guys, The latest reply was Chanins when I started typing, so I didn't see the ones that followed.

Nick, great detective work. The name appears to have been applied to two different clones that happened to be growing in the one locality. Did these plants represent a recognisable subset of variation within the species? Possibly not - they imply that it was identical to the original species description. So, does the name have any relevance when applied to seedlings?

Cheers, Paul

Well, the only thing that has been clearly established, Paul, is that we're all writing at the same time and overlapping!

The Journal article does seem to suggest a variable population, but the illustration is making me doubt that this clone is even correctly IDed in the first place, so now I don't even know if I can legitimately call them O. burle-marxii!

Lisa, after looking at the journal photos I reached the same conclusion that you did. However, I'm not sure there is any downside to that. It's a cool plant and now you can crank out some cultivars without an hesitation.

Well, the downside is that now I not only don't know what to call the ones I sell off, I don't even know what the heck I've got! I really wasn't looking to name any cvs, I just wanted to reproduce what I had.

Just call em Orth. burle-marxii seedling and send some to Michael so he can send some to me!!!

btw, this is an Ortho that was from Bill Baker that he just called Ortho. 'Silver.' Similar or not? Its also not mine. Wish it were!

{{gwi:445313}}

Hi Lisa,

It looks like the "areas of doubt and uncertainty" are pretty clearly defined but unfortunately cover just about everything to do with that plant. I wonder if anyone has ever attempted to look at the range of variation in O. b-m in the wild, and whether your seedlings fit into it. At least then you could call them O. b-m with some confidence - looks much better than Orthophytum sp.?

Not very cheery, Paul

Chris, I got my original from Michael, so you may just have to wait for the next available pup. I doubt he would want a bunch of questionable seedlings back. I did send him back a pup of that other b-m clone (mistagged albopictum) from the other thread. That thing is a fairly rapid pupper, so he may have more of that soon.

That's a very nice clone from Bill Baker, too. It has that b-m look, but I don't think I've ever seen one with silver banding.

Paul, since none of the babies has bloomed, I think the question is whether the mother fits into the profile for b-m. Just looking at the coloration, I can see how it might be a hybrid of b-m with albopictum or something along those lines.

If you didn't see the Journal article, here are the scanned photos:

{{gwi:445314}}

There doesn't seem to be a big difference in appearance between the two forms, they mostly cite a size disparity.

Now here is my plant, which is roughly the same size as my other b-m clones. First, in bud, showing the rainbow effect:

{{gwi:445315}}

and then opening its first bloom:

{{gwi:445316}}

It just has a different look. All the other b-ms seem to have red floral bracts, and the silver scales are much coarser. None seem to have that white ring and gradation of colors, but there are other species that do. Frankly I like this guy better than any of the b-ms, I'd just like it a bit more if I knew its story.

Lisa, it sure is a nice plant. Your 'rainbow effect' and the white 'halo' make a great combination. Hope you have some luck with the info. Cheers, Paul

Lisa:

I now have a number of the sunburst Ortho spp. here and have found them, like many other bromes, to be very variable from generation to generation with regard to size, color and form. Offsets tend to start off very upright with narrow leaves, which become wider and flatter when they have been separated from the mother plant and as they mature. Pretty much all of them assume vivid, flame red casts here when they approach flowering. My b-m var. b-m plants start off the season a sober medium gray, but rapidly turn bright red as they start flowering. All of my Orthos are grown fully exposed to the elements and receive from 11 to 13 hours of unfiltered sun daily.

Interestingly enough, I have had no success in selfing any of the spp. nor hybrids that I grow here yet. All of these plants are also very attractive to very small native trigonid bees that can enter the open flowers without hindrance, and this constant activity by natural pollinators has also produced no fruit set. A couple of spp. that I am growing have not flowered yet (navioides, "sanguineum", albopictum/pure sp.)so perhaps these spp. don't have this fertility barrier.

Good luck with the kids there,

J

Lisa, in a german forum they show a pic of Orth. burle-marxii v. seabrae
at a botanical garden which have the white hola, so they doubt if it was misID.
The plant look pretty close yours.

Here is a link that might be useful: Orthophytum albopictum?

Hi guys,

Chanin, neat link, and more neat plants, even if I really don't have a clue what I'm looking at.

However, I do reckon it's worth putting the webpage through Google Language German to English translator. If it works for others anything like it works for me, the last sentence above the first pic is just wonderful.

Cheers, Paul

Hi Lisa ,i know little about these plants but looking closely at the photo of your plant in flower several things stand out as different between it and the photo no 5 ,for one your flower is /has yellow look in the centre from the pollen where as photo 5 is white ,the flowering rosette is totally different as are the spines on the plant when compared ,and on your plant the imprint of the other leaves is very well defined on the next leaves down ,not so on N0 5 photo ,if they where Vrieseas ? i would say they are 2 different plants ,but wich would be the true form ? yours however is a much nicer looking plant allround ( but its not about that)and the leaf tips on your plant are blunt compared to photo 5 ,this type of dilema also occurs with Orchids and drove me wild for all the same reasons ,not sure what i would do in your case with the seedlings ,but more than likely they would not ever get the variety name , best of luck at sorting this out ,cheers , Jack

Hi Guys

Lisa, I think you are asking the wrong people, the answer you're after can only come from Michael as he is the source of your original plant, you need to go back to his source, was it a vegetative offset from a true species or was it seed grown, my O.b-m's have never self pollinated either, do they or don't they self ???, I don't know for sure, if they don't then maybe a hybrid is involved with your plant, only Michael can confirm it's origins for you, otherwise we are only guessing. If he says it is a true species then take the next step.
You're obviously very good with Neo's, so what would you do if this was a dubious species Neo. you would cut the sucker up, so why are you holding back, get the knife out & do some cutting & measuring.
Yours is a very nice plant, however it doesn't seem to match any of the photo's posted here or others I have looked at elsewhere, your plant is lacking those silver scales all over, why ??.

Maybe flower them all then make a fair decision.

Remember:
True variety x same True variety = same True Variety

Pinkbroms

Thanks for all of your replies. I've sent Michael a message asking if he can fill in any of the blanks. I'll let you know if I get any new info.

Okay, here's the word from Michael:

"The Orthophytum was a plant I got years ago from a friend in central Florida who moved out of state. He was a long time collector and got a lot of his plants from Pineapple Place. The plant had an odd name on it which I can't remember and it wasn't on the species list. When the plant bloomed I took it to Harry and he ID'd it as a form of burle-marxii called Seabrae. I've grown the plant from seed and I also gave some seed to Peter Bak to grow at their nursery in Holland. Peter grew a bigger crop than I and he saw variations in the plant, both in foliage and the way the center colored. I'm also growing the regular burle-marxii from seed and I'm seeing some variations in the foliage, mainly in the amount of silver on the foliage."

Sooo....... apparently it wasn't originally tagged as b-m v. Seabrae! I'm kind of surprised that Harry did the ID, but at least that answers my question about what he would have said about it. I'm still stunned that he's left the BIC, I had a number of questions I wanted to ask him.

Interesting also that Michael has grown b-m v. b-m from seed, since many of you say it doesn't self. One thing I found out on this plant, though-- the caps don't necessarily pop open when the seed is ripe, you have to just take a chance and break them open. It makes it really hard to know there's anything going on there at all.

Well, Lisa it sound we are dealing with Ortho. burle-marxii complex which we know nothing about(^_*)

Hi Guys

Lisa, Peter tells me the seed he collected from a plant at Michael's was variable, but has no idea if it is a hybrid or not, says "just because you get varition in a seed batch it doesn't always mean it is a hybrid as nature does tend to do this sometimes with some species", he also said, that some of these plants will self, some not.

I guess it's up to you, a knife & a measuring stick if you really want an answer.

What did Micheal call his seed batch ???

Pinkbroms

Yes, I realize that a certain amount of variability is to be expected in species seedling populations, and that that in itself doesn't necessarily indicate hybrid origin. What I was originally trying to determine here was how much flexibility a botanical variety could accomodate, as opposed to a cultivar or a flat species designation. But then that question got sidelined by the lack of resemblance to the type collection photo.

I'm not much of a dissector, I generally leave that to the taxonomists, but even if the measurements matched (and I don't have a plant in bloom at the moment), I don't think it would make sense to automatically give the mother the same name as the one in the photo when there are so many differences. I'm wondering if perhaps that's what Harry did because that was the closest available match? It seems entirely possible to me that this could be either an undescribed species or a hybrid, and the fact that it had a different name on it to begin with tends to support my feelings. If either of those is the case, then cutting it up won't help much anyway, as there would be no data to compare it to.

I don't know what Michael is calling his seedlings, but I do know that he doesn't like to get involved in taxonomic speculation. He's a grower, not a botanist. If Harry IDed the plant for him, then that's what he's going with. I don't know what I'm going to call them either, but whatever the tag says will probably have a lot of ?s in it!

Lisa:

Just a guess, but since both albopictum and burle-marxii are known to occur in sympatry at some localities in the Chapada Diamantina, and that this fact has been reliably reported on by Dennis Cathcart and others, your plants may very well be naturally occurring hybrids. This would, BTW, go a long way to explaining the variances you are noting between individuals seedlings of a selfing. However, having germinated and grown on both line-bred and wild-collected brom seed from a number of bromeliad genera, I agree with the notion that - OBVIOUSLY - a lot of variation in color and form is also evident in some seedling groups of many "pure" species.

Chanin: I think that we have discussed this before here, but there is indeed a very good taxonomic treatise dealing with the perenially-rosetted Orthophytums in print. Unfortunately for many English-speakers, it is in Portuguese. The work is a 2008 Master's thesis written by Rafael Batista Louzada and in free translation is titled, "Taxonomy and Cytogenetics of the genus Orthophytum Beer (Bromeliaceae) with sessile-inflorescences". Apart from some excellent, very detailed botanical illustration in this work, it also contains many superb color photos and an appended full-color field guide to the species. Batista Louzada is the man who very creatively baptized this group of Orthos, "Bromélias Raio-do-Sol" (sunburst bromeliads) which I have taken the liberty of corrupting to "sunburst Orthophytums".

He makes no mention of var. seabrae in his excellent treatment of O. burle-marxii.

As those of us who grow these plants know, they are incredibly plastic with regard to color and size depending on the cultural conditions that they are subject to. I submit that it is very hard to distinguish a soft-grown, pastel-colored albopictum from the putative burle-marxii var. seabrae plants depicted above.

Cheerio,

J

Jay, I tried to email you but got a bounce-back. If you have any interest in trying again with this thing, just send me an email, okay?

Pinkbroms which Peter are you talking about collecting seeds from Michael?

Hi Guys

Peter Bak, as mentioned by Lisa, the seed was collected from a plant by Michael at his nursery & given to Peter, as Peter was mentioned I thought I would check with him for his results to see if the variation was across the board.

Pinkbroms

They are varied. Michael has some of the plants from that seed batch.

Update time!

The grex started to lose some of its green once the fertilizer began wearing off. Those dark outer leaves seem more characteristic of O. albopictum than burle-marxii to me, which makes me think the seed parent may in fact be a hybrid. This is how they looked a month ago:

{{gwi:445318}}

Now the first one is going to bloom. At this point it looks quite a bit like the parent:

{{gwi:445320}}

Another is just starting. We'll see if the coloration turns out any different as it matures.

{{gwi:445322}}

This one isn't blooming yet, but it's got kind of a faint variegation thing going on there. I'll be keeping my eye on this guy for sure (blue tag means keeper!)

{{gwi:445324}}

I still don't know what to call them, but if they're pretty enough I guess people won't care.

Whatever they are, they sure are NICE! That lightly variegated one is stunning.
Please don't throw out all of the non-keepers just yet Lisa! (wink)

K :)

Hi Lisa

Keep it simple would be the best: Orthophytum Son's of Seabrae, this covers the lot.

Pinkbroms

How can you call one plant 'Son's of' anything?

Hermaphrodites of Sebrae?

Lisa, you're right, it is a problem. In theory the F2 of a species should be stable and you would expect that the F2 of a variety would be fairly stable, but that doesn't always happen. When we did the Everglades tour we were always surprised by the variability of the aptly named T. variabilis.

I've been reading the book "Naming Nature: The Clash between Instinct and Science" by C Yoon. It's a pretty good book so far that hasn't been able to minimize my low expectations from classical taxonomy. But when you consider the title of the first chapter, "The Strange Case of the Fish That Wasn't" you shouldn't really expect her to be defending Linnaeus.

What about 'S.O.S' then ?

I was thinking the same thing, Graeme, and then number them. At least for now.

I don't care what the name is...I just want one!

Hi Lisa,

Sorry about my silly name suggestion, and sorry to pinkbroms as well. I just couldn't resist the cue left by my mate Shane-the-bromaholic. They are very nice plants indeed and that one with the subtle stripey pattern is really something. Thanks for sharing them and good luck with the naming. Please give more updates as they progress!

Re the naming, unless someone can say definitively that these plants fall outside the range of natural variation that could be expected in the wild population of O. b-m v. Seabrae, and since the parent has been identified by a recognised authority and certainly seems to fit the bill as far as we can tell, then I suggest that you would be perfectly entitled to call them O. b-m. v. Seabrae F2, numbers 1, 2, etc, and that would give the best available information to the people who acquire the plants.

Or even better, O. b-m. v. Seabrae x self numbers 1, 2 etc, for thicko's like me who are never sure what F2 means.

Of course, this assumes that v. Seabrae really is a botanical variety and not simply a wild-collected, named clone. But hey, if it is defined as a botanical variety, which it is, then by definition it refers to a population exhibiting some variation, so people have to expect some variation.

Sorry about the rant, but on the subject of variability in the populations of these plants, I was stimulated by this thread to do a bit of googling on O. albopictum and O. b-m. One of the things that came up was some research (try http://www.springerlink.com/content/gng230318u351ux1/) indicating that O. albopictum and O. b-m. are both tetraploid, ie each plant has four copies of each gene, compared to the two copies that is the more usual number in a lot of wild plants including other Orthophytums. Since there can be different versions of some genes in a species, sort-of like blue eyes, brown eyes, etc in humans, and since these particular Orthophytums have four copies of each gene, each of which could be a different version of that gene (well for some genes anyway), and since in a selfing you re-shuffle these combinations, it is not at all surprising that the results of a selfing could be very variable indeed.

So, sorry about the rant! I hope it was of some interest.

Cheers, Paul

I am with you on most of that Paul ,we at times tend to overlook that ploidy counts a great deal and this can and does cause variations and if a diploid is crossed with a tetraploid giving rise to triploids we have slightly differing plants again ,in any given species of plant(s) on earth naturally occuring tetraploids ,diploids and triploids exist ,triploids are nearly always sterile as a pod parent but not always as a pollen parent ,ploidy counts are very important , anyway good luck sorting it out Lisa ,no matter what, there are going to be some very nice plants there ,
Jack

Gee, you mean I might have to actually study genetics at some point? I admit I have a hard time understanding the implications of ploidy, and since there has been so little information available on chromosome counts of broms, I usually just ignore that aspect and hope for the best. That would certainly explain why these types of Orthos don't want to cross with Neos, though. There goes my dream of a rainbow-hued xNeophytum!

The esteemed Harry L's ruling notwithstanding, I am having an increasingly hard time accepting this as a true burle-marxii, Seabrae or otherwise. It just has too many traits that point to an ilicit liaison with albopictum. And given the initial tag confusion, maybe the best thing to do would be to treat it as a presumed natural hybrid of murky origins and just start assigning cv. names. Or a grex name with numbers. I'll have to see how variable they're going to be first.

Does albopictum self also?

Hi Lisa ,ploidy does have big implications and as it costs money for the research and Broms are not considered a important resource ( except pineaples) there is little funding for this ,pity ,yet for Orchids it has been done for years , but Broms will get there ,and as little information is made available as well ,we are left in the dark ,i would be inclined to grow them all ,they are a nice batch of plants and even if not what you want,you will have no trouble selling them , but like you i would have trouble accepting it as a true Burle -marxii Seabrea on the given evidence ,but its a beautifull plant no matter what .
Jack

Hi Lisa, I didn't mean to imply that you need to study genetics - far from it!!!! I was just a bit clumsy trying to bounce some ideas around. Cheers, Paul

Well, it's still just these two, but it sure looks like there's going to be some color variation. I guess I'll have to hang onto all of them now, who knows what may come out of them?

#1
{{gwi:445326}}

#2
{{gwi:445328}}

And just for comparison, here is my one lonely and extremely slow-growing O. albopictum. No bloom yet, and I don't know if it's a selfer, but those dark brownish outer leaves are something that I haven't seen on the usual forms of burle-marxii, which is one reason I think we may be dealing with a hybrid here.

{{gwi:445330}}

Lisa, I noticed the pine bark in your pot and wanted to let you know that Tropiflora grows their O. albopictums in what they call "dirty perlite" which is perlite with a little potting mix. I have an albopictum in a similar potting mix and it's not what I would call a slow grower. I've had mine for just over a year and got a decent size pup from it already but it's not showing any signs of flowering. I wonder how big they get.

That's just a top dressing of redwood bark, Nick. We use it on all the broms to help retain moisture and keep the weeds down. Ken noticed that Bird Rock was doing that with good results, so we tried it and have been doing it ever since. Underneath that is our regular mix of black cinder, peat, perlite and vermiculite. I'll be the first to admit, however, that I'm not the best grower around, far from it. There may be a better mix, and more perlite does seem to be agreeable to many of the terrestrials. I just can't be bothered to fine-tune it for each plant! ;-)

Lisa:

Congrats on having produced a very nice series of these handsome plants. I agree with your opinion that this is a naturally-occurring hybrid and not a subspecies of burle-marxii. It find it noteworthy that Rafael Louzada completely ignored "var. seabrae" in his recently-published monograph on rosetted orthos. Since several of the spp. that have white centers at anthesis occur in sympatry or very close to populations of burle-marxii I strongly suspect that you are correct in your assumption that this is an albopictum-burle-marxii cross. As you grow out the selfings, this should become more or less obvious.

BTW - my certified, guaranteed, sworn-on-a-stack-of-bibles albopictum has flowered and it's yet another NOID hybrid dud (insert one's favorite string of really bad language here). I've pretty much despaired of ever getting a real one. However, the other division I obtained of sp. nov. "Brazil" is a winner and may have selfed in May. Will advise.

Ciao,

Jay

Jay, did you try getting an albopictum from Michael? See the photo he sent me at the bottom of the link below. Does that look like the real deal to you?

BTW, any germination on those seeds?

Here is a link that might be useful: O. albopictum?

Hi Jay, Hi Lisa, do you know if anyone has ever had one of these things "breed true"? And Jay, did Louzada do anything to define the ranges of variation for these species based on substantial surveys of wild populations and use the results of this to re-visit the species definitions? Or did he rely on the published descriptions?

My reason for asking these two very specific questions is that everything that is being dredged up by this thread suggests that maybe we have a bunch of described species that are actually just randomly selected points out of a range of continuous variation in one highly variable species. If this is the case, then you would expect exactly the sorts of results that are being reported.

Mind you, I have no expertise in the taxonomy of these plants, hence the questions. Cheers, Paul

Lisa:

No...until a couple of months ago I was quite certain that THIS time (3rd lucky) with direct intervention by the nursery owner on my behalf, I had the Real McCoy. Alas...while the latest plant looks nothing like the hybrid swarm from the first releases, it is certainly not a pure albopictum. I will contact MK and see if he can help me out. Yes, he apparently has the true species. Thanks for the suggestion.

Your seeds had excellent and relatively rapid germination...tiny amount of seedlings lost to a touch of damping-off early on in spite of being sown on heat-sterilized growing media, but at present have about 100 x 1-1.50 cm diameter healthy-looking seedlings in a single compot. I sowed on mix of sifted oak leaf litter, fine bark and coarse pumice and have used RODI water from the gitgo. At this point, now I'm kinda hoping that some of them grow up to look like their putative (?) albopictum grandparents ;^)

Your allenii seed here still ripening...IME, very slow for an Aechmea.

Paul: Louzada's excellent Master's thesis is far ranging and "yes" he spent quite a bit of time in the field and published in situ photos and diagnostic illustrations of all taxa, incl. the ones described relatively recently by Elton Leme. I am certainly not an expert, but the plethora of photos taken in habitat by a number of different individuals and available on the web/in published works of these species suggests that there are "good" species involved. Examination of live material and specimens in herbaria by Leme, Luther, Louzada and others also points to these plants being separate entities with "good" morphological characters that define them as such.

I doubt that any species in this group, barring navioides, burle-marxii and vagans, have been in cultivation outside of Brazil long enough to know much about how variable they are from seed. We will, however, know much more about how they breed within the next several years.

Cheerio,

J

I'm now hoping that these seedlings also self, and that continued F2 and F3 generations will take the mix off into new directions with color forms unlike either (presumed) parent. Getting maybe a half dozen really unique cultivars that way would do much to offset the frustration of having been so far unable to successfully cross-pollinate any of these types myself.

Two days back I visited the Swiss Succulent Collection in Zurich. They have a plant also labelled as "Orthophytum burle-marxii var. seabrae". Here are some pictures of flowering plants:

{{gwi:445332}}

http://jsaul.de/bilder/2011-06-10/P6100410.JPG

http://jsaul.de/bilder/2011-06-10/P6100407.JPG

This is a wild collected clone. I have always been somewhat doubtful with thespect to the name, but the plants shown here under the very same name look remarkably similar. Just a coincidence? The Zurich plants, by the way, are originally wild collected clones, field number "Supthut 8935". I don't want to speculate but just add this little piece of information here. These must be the same plants as those in the link provided above by Chanin.

Here are the other two pictures, sorry.

{{gwi:445333}}

{{gwi:445334}}