New Species? a "Natural" GMO?

Actually Cystocarpium roskamianum isn't new, rather it is newly identified as a hybrid plant.

quote:

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'Weird' Fern Shows The Power Of Interspecies Sex

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Botanists say this plant is the fern equivalent of a human-lemur love child.

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The love between two ferns knows few bounds, it appears. A DNA analysis of a hybrid fern shows that its parents are two different species separated by nearly 60 million years of evolution.

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"A 60 million year divergence is approximately equivalent to a human mating with a lemur," says Carl Rothfels, a fern researcher at the University of British Columbia, who headed the study. The hybrid is a record, he says.

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But he says this type of fern appears to have come from two parents that you wouldn't expect to be a couple. One lives on rocky outcrops. The other is found on the floors of forests. They are two different species from different places, and yet somehow they get together to make this hybrid.

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The team's DNA analysis confirming the odd coupling is published in the March edition of the journal The American Naturalist.

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"Ferns are unique among plants for many reasons, and this study adds another potential difference to the list," says Emily Sessa, a researcher at the University of Florida in Gainsville. Apparently, ferns do not easily evolve barriers that keep them from interbreeding.

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Rothfels says the hybrid fern is sterile, though it can reproduce "vegetatively" by sending out runners across the ground.

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GMO scientists like to say that there products are no different from natural evolution with random mutations.Opponents like to point out that you don't get crosses between different branches of life with natural evolution but you do with GMO science.So what is the difference between this fern hybrid and GMO corn\Bt crops?1. it is sterile (as are many hybrids), but with root propagation it can still evolve, albeit more like bacteria than like sexual species.
2. it is not subject to heavy herbicide ecology impact, so it will have natural competition and natural predators\enemies.
3. it isn't being grown in an artificial monoculture application, so it will have to interact naturally with other flora and fauna in the ecology for survival.
4. it isn't a food crop meant to be consumed.
5. fairly similar genomes (both parents are ferns).
6. the DNA shared is in fairly equal proportions between the parents.What are the similarities?
1. the genome has been altered from the parent/sEnjoy.

Did this really need a new thread?