The habitat and the number of Habenaria radiata, one of the vulnerable and endangered wild orchids in Japan, decreases year by year. It is necessary to develop an effective method to propagate this species. By applying in vitro germination and culture techniques, it was found that the seeds of thi sspecies germinated in a few weeks on artifici amledia and acclimated easily .Furthermore, the term of growth from seedlings to full-grown was significantl yshorter than other Orchidaceae investigated .A large number of bulbs were obtained and the morphological and physiological characteristic sof plants grown from them were examined in 1994 and 1995. Some characteristic sof individua lclones, e.g .number of leaves ,size of the flowers, and arc of the lip remained stable over the two years. Positive comparative correlations were found between many characteristics ,for example weight of the bulb and stem diameter, length of the stem and length of the leaf ,length of the leaf and the number of leaves, the length of the leaf and the number of flowers, length of the leaf and stem diameter, width of the leaf and stem diameter, the number of leaves and the number of flowers. Several variant phenotypes such as albinos, dwarfs, variegated leaves, unopened flowers and green-striped flowers that are similar to reported mutants, were produced. The effectiveness of seed propagation and problems associated with variants is discussed.
