Plants with self incompatibility mechanisms have to make hybrids to survive. Does that make sense for this discussion? James Frelichowski --- On Mon, 6/14/10, Mark Brown <brown.mark@wanadoo.fr> wrote: From: Mark Brown <brown.mark@wanadoo.fr> Subject: Re: [pbs] Plants of hybrid origen To: "Pacific Bulb Society" <pbs@lists.ibiblio.org> Date: Monday, June 14, 2010, 11:34 PM Le 14/06/2010 19:18, Donald Barnett a écrit : > Hello, > > Taxonomy question: if a species of plant is of hybrid origen and the plants > are producing true uniform plants from seed production would it still be > considered a hybrid or its own species? In the location of such hybrids they > make up 95% or more of the plants in the area and one of the parents is no > longer found there. Any help would be much appreciated. > > Thanks, > > Donnie > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.ibiblio.org > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php > http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/ > > > > > Ce message entrant est certifie sans virus connu. > Analyse effectuee par AVG - http://www.avg.fr/ > Version: 9.0.829 / Base de donnees virale: 271.1.1/2937 - Date: 06/14/10 08:35:00 > > Dear All, As I understood things a hybrid can become a species when chromosomes double to produce a fertile entity. Are there not more then a few accepted fern species that illustrate this point? Certainly from an evolutionary point of view quite a few species have arisen like this. But then apomixy allows new species to arrise with every least little mutation. If you Opuntia is multiplying only vegetatively then it is suspect.But you say that it grows without problem and uniformly from seed. So that rules out a clone I would think. It is true that genetic variation is to be expected in a hybrid swarm. But it is not a hard and fast rule if there is not much genetic variation in the parent species, and that they are similar to begin with would rule out too much variation. Evidently this plant is very stable. And I fully understand why you want a name for it. Best regards, Mark