Back when I was flasking my orchid seeds, as I recall, as soon as they germinated, they turned green and you would see all these tiny green flyspecks. At the protocorm stage, they were several mm in diameter (these were mainly cattleyas). Any that didn't have chloroplasts would have been white but should continue to grow in the medium, relying on the sugar in the mix. I don't recall seeing much if any of that behavior, and certainly in the replate medium, where they would develop into plantlets, I didn't see white plants, and that medium also contained sugar. At the same time, there were plenty of seeds that never developed at all. But with a hundred thousand seeds or so, there was no shortage, unless the entire pod was a dud. It is interesting that orchids chose to make tiny seeds with no endosperm so they could be wind-dispersed, whereas the bromeliads that they share the trees with chose to make normal seeds and rely on parachutes to keep them airborne. Reminds me of two student teams independently engineering their solutions to the same problem. Bob _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net>