What is a “NOID”?
African violets have been hybridized from original species for over a hundred years. When a hybridizer is happy with a cultivar they have grown, they will give that cultivar a name. Sometimes violets are sold without a name (often in general greenhouses or stores) and sometimes a name gets lost. In either of these cases, the violet is officially “NOID” (No identification). Because there are thousands of cultivars and many that are similar in appearance, it is nearly impossible to identify a violet’s cultivar name if it is missing.
What is a chimera?
A chimera is any organism that has more than one set of unique DNA. In other words, some cells contain one set of DNA, but other cells contain a different set of DNA. It is a rare condition, generally speaking.
In African Violets, two types of chimeras are possible: leaf chimeras and flower chimeras. Flower chimeras have the characteristic striped petals: the stripes displaying the phenotype of one of the sets of DNA, and the other portion of the petal displaying the phenotype from the other set of DNA.
Because of this phenomena, chimeras cannot be reproduced by leaf cutting as the leaf cutting only transmits one set of DNA, not both. Chimeras must be produced by other means of propagation, and for this reason, they are typically more expensive to buy.