Nick, any clone or any variety of Dendrobium speciosum crossed with Lynette Banks will produce Dendrobium Golden Arch.

Sounds like the problem of time with Dendrobium speciosum crosses occurs here with a long wait to flowering if you buy a tiny plant.

Maybe some crosses produce more variation than others but it is always fun to see a seedling flower for the first time.

At the local orchid society there is a benching class for seedlings which is open to any orchid raised from seed flowering for the first time.

I defer to your superior knowledge about D spec but this does not make any sense to me. You are saying that ANY variety of D spec crossed with Lynette Banks produces 'Golden Arch'? The group of plants I looked at had a specific parent, D spec var grandi 'Golden Rain' and there was plenty of variation in the offspring.

The variation possible in 'Golden Arch' must be endless if ANY speciosum can be used as parent. If a 10" cane white flowered spec and a 38" cane yellow flowered one both qualify as parents, what's the point in even giving it a name? There is variation enough in the offspring from the same parents but here we are looking at a multitude of possible parents all producing offspring with the same name.

I must admit I'm baffled, thought the process was more specific.

On the other hand, correct me if I'm wrong, any D speciosum crossed with any D kingianum gives you a D Delicatum so there is a similar broad range of plants all with a common basic name which can have a huge variety of expression.

Life must be simple in the American Kennel club where any variation in parents gives you a 'MUTT'. To get a Beagle, mom and dad must be registered Beagles. Anything else is a mixed breed other wise know as 'Mutt'. If a few hundred years ago the orchid people had gone in that direction, the million or so registered hybrids we have today would all have a common put down name and countless paper pusher who keep track of all this would be out of work.

Nick

Nick,

ALL offspring plants from this cross,
Den Lynette Banks X Den speciosum are named:

Den Golden Arch

David Young of New Zealand is credited with being the originator; Michael Pham of California registered this hybrid in 2005.

--Stitz--

Thanks for relating the experience, Nick. It seems like the grex of a hybrid is named without regarding whether parents are specific clones or not, nor whether parents are a particular variety.

This is a little perplexing to me, however. For example, some orchid varieties have significant deviance from one another ie Laelia purpurata var carnea versus var alba or var rubra...while I don't think hybrid names should reflect differences in clonal parentage, I think that crosses involving different well documented and characterized varieties should perhaps warrant different names. Certainly L. purpurata var alba x [something] would look quite different from L. purpurata var striata x [the same something].

I haven't done much reading on this so maybe I'm missing something...

Calvin, I totally relate to what you are saying. Michael Pham is the person I got the plant from. He registered it alright using the term D speciosum only without being specific as to the type of speciosum .

Here you have a guy in Orange County California registering a plant he got from a breeder in New Zealand who used a specific speciosum as one of the parent. It strikes me as peculiar that all other growers, world wide, who use Lynette Banks with speciosums as different as Venus is from Mars should be locked into using that same name.

Never the less, that's the way it is, I have been educated, I thought things would be more specific.

The kingi x speciosum story is similar as a white kingi 6" tall crossed with a hillii and a red kingi 12" tall crossed with a grandi will give you a totally different group of offspring. Never the less all are called Delicatum.

Nick

Nick, i am not a speciosum guru. Full Stop. At one of the local native orchid societies spring show last year there were benched under the Class Den. speciosum about 20? maybe 30 plants in full bloom.

You would have to be a botanist or a speciosum fanatic to say which variety name to apply to some of them. This is because breeding is being carried out crossing varieties. Crossing of varieties may of occurred in the wild at variety boundaries.

I am not fussed about the variety of my one blooming plant. I have written on the label Den. speciosum 'Doug'. Though if you are buying seedlings, the variety name might be nice to know as it will give an idea of the size of the mature plant.

Here is what was written on a benching card at a recent meeting....

Lc. Mini Purple 'Tamami' x Lc. Mini Purple 'Lea'. If you like Cattleya Hybrids that is valuable information. But there is no way i am going to type up all that stuff for a results database so i can print the results on the society news letter.

So I entered Lc. Mini Purple 'John' and told John that he could change 'John' to anything his heart desired ( But not 'Tamami' or 'Lea' or some other informally reserved clone names....example 'Carmela')

"It seems like the grex of a hybrid is named without regarding whether parents are specific clones or not, nor whether parents are a particular variety."

The nomenclature rules do not include varietal or cultivar names.

--Stitz--

@stitz - lol yes that's what I said, hence the second half of my message, describing my slight dismay at why this is! :P

I think that crosses involving different well documented and characterized varieties should perhaps warrant different names. Certainly L. purpurata var alba x [something] would look quite different from L. purpurata var striata x [the same something].

The problem being that Kew and, as a result, the RHS do not accept "alba" and "rubra" as valid varieties or forms of Laelia purpurata. Suprisingly few of the variety names commonly used by orchid growers are considered valid by Kew.

The orchid naming system is undoubtedly flawed compared with naming systems of other cultivated plants but it's the one we're stuck with and I don't think there is an easy way to fix it up.

On the other hand, correct me if I'm wrong, any D speciosum crossed with any D kingianum gives you a D Delicatum so there is a similar broad range of plants all with a common basic name which can have a huge variety of expression.

While Dendrobium Delicatum is often used both in Australian and elsewhere to refer to any cross between kingianum and speciosum, Dendrobium Specio-Kingianum is technically the correct name for an artificial hybrid between those two species. Dendrobium x delicatum refers to the natural hybrid between kingianum and speciosum. Technically, it's a natural hybrid between between Dendrobium kingianum and Dendrobium speciosum var hillii. Otherwise, yes, Dendrobium Specio-Kingianum is quite variable. Dendrobium Hilda Poxon, a hybrid between two of Australia's most highly variable species, has an even greater potential for variation. The early crosses using speciosum var speciosum and tetragonum var tetragonum bear little resemblance to the current tetragonum var giganteum based Hilda Poxon breeding.

Originally I was not going to post about the weekend experience because it seemed so obvious but I must admit that I have had some misconceptions and learned from this blurb.

For the novice, just remember that seedlings which are not cloned will not necessarily resemble each other or the parents. Grand parents and great grandparents all get an oportunity to reemerge. Often at orchid shows you will see a large plant in bloom displayed as a sample and smaller non blooming plants which are for sale. One can assume that this is a cloned situation but it does not hurt to confirm this with the vendor.

On the other hand if one of the parents is Shaq O'Neil, you can rest assured that the offspring will probably not look like Nadia Komanichi.

Nick

corymbosa -- Thank you for your contribution to this thread.

--Stitz--

Nick, going back to one of your posts above....
"Life must be simple in the American Kennel club where any variation in parents gives you a 'MUTT'. To get a Beagle, mom and dad must be registered Beagles. Anything else is a mixed breed other wise know as 'Mutt'. If a few hundred years ago the orchid people had gone in that direction, the million or so registered hybrids we have today would all have a common put down name and countless paper pusher who keep track of all this would be out of work.""

I am one of those countless paper pushers....I have just finished looking at some of the mysteries written on benching cards from the last orchid society meeting. I have given up telling people it is not Rocket Science...The heading now in the bulletin discussing names is Rocket Science.

Anyway, you have simplified the problem comparing dogs with orchids. There is only one species of dog whilst i am not even going to guess at the number of Orchid Species.

"Million or so registered hybrids" and you are not from Texas! I'd like to know the number?

As for people saying that the system is rubbish. It is not! I have two flasks of orchids to deflask. The hybridiser gave me the name as Willinga x Tom Wilson... a visit to the RHS Site is needed to check the Genera names and spelling.

I don't know the real number, maybe someone can look it up for us. No doubt I'm greatly exagerating but there is a kernel of truth.

I'm not saying the system is rubbish. It is what it is. It allows you to cross a Laelia with a Cattleya and get an LC. If you cross a Doberman with a German Sheppard you get a mutt. You can further refine the Lc you get a Blc, if you further cross the above mutt with a Pitt Bull you get just another mutt.

All mutts are equal, all are excluded from dog shows. Yet it is true that all our 'breeds' came from the crossing of excisting and established breeds sometimes in the past. The AKC is strongly resistent to new entries in the fiels and raises the bar very high for the creation of a new breed. Our mutts make up the diversity and beauty of orchid shows. The bar for creating new entries in the field is very low. I'm not complaining, it's just a different approach, that's all.

Nick

As for people saying that the system is rubbish. It is not! I have two flasks of orchids to deflask. The hybridiser gave me the name as Willinga x Tom Wilson... a visit to the RHS Site is needed to check the Genera names and spelling.

My only pet peeve with the grex naming system as it currently stands is that it struggles to deal with the dynamic nature of taxonomy. I'm not talking about the Chicken Licken's running around because someone decided to lump Cattleya. It's the problem you face when one of the species in the background of a hybrid you're growing is split and you're left trying to figure out whether or not your plant needs a name change

And then you have competing registries. Now we are approaching true rubbish.

I got an award on a large Bulbo some years ago. I entered it as Bulbophyllum fletcherianum, it got an AM/AOS and since it would have been the first Bulbo fletcherianum in the US I had to submit a sample which was evaluated by Emly Siegrist who promptly shot that name down and renamed it Bulbo speisii. I did not appreciate this and launched a one year long effort to straighten this out.

Bottom line is that the whole world calls this plant B fletcherianum except in America where the AOS insist on calling it speisii. Siegrist's last book on Bulbophyllums never once gives recognition to the name fletcherianum, it is not in the end of book glossary. That's how deep the antipathy and bullheadedness runs.

Kew's list of species only recognizes fletcherianum and lists speisii as a synonym. Vermulen in his book on Bulbos also does the same. I'm fully aware that the 1914 picture suggests major differences but for what it's worth, the world calls these plants Fletcherianum except for the AOS where the likes of Siegrist, Christenson and Garey do otherwise.

Mine is labeled B fletcherianum 'Paul's Fragrance' AM/AOS and that's the way it's going to stay, Siegrist and the AOS be damned!

Nick

You have it correctly labeled. The AOS currently recognizes it as fletcherianum, no longer spiesii but it also was once known by Cirrhopetalum fletcherianum.

Brooke

There is one of life's little mysteries down the back yard. It is actually two massive plants of ???????? because i do not know its origins.... was it wild collected ages before my late father in law owned it? Who knows.

Anyway, i have given away countless bits of what i call Den. Delicatum over the years. No one ever seems to give it the correct name of Den. Specio-Kingianum.

As for the mooted but not yet accepted by Kew names of Dendrobium cacatua
and capitisyork for two varieties of Dendrobium tetragonum, that will just confuse us already confused humble orchid growers even more.

Not unhappy with the Laeliinae name changes because the RHS Register shows the old names as synonyms. But that was not a messy process like acceptance of the name changes in the preceding paragraph.

Thank you Brooke. I was not aware that they finally fell in line with the rest of the world. Since there was a previously awarded B speisii mine will not be the first one. Both of them and all other subsequent ones can now be labled fletcherianum. Can't wait to see Christenson again, have been arguing with him over this for many years.

Funny, the power in a name. I bought that plant in 1997 from Kawamoto Orchids in Honolulu. $250 for a goood sized plant, OUCH. It had 2 labels, Bulbo phaelanopsis and Bulbo fletcherianum. Lester Kawamoto told me that when it blooms if the flowers have yellow hairs on them it's the more common phaelanopsis, if on the other hand the flowers are devoid of hairs it's the almost never seen (at that time) fletcherianum. When it finally bloomed 4 or 5 years later after growing a 36" long leaf, the flowers were devoid of hairs. I drove 250 miles to get to a judging place and got the award. THE FIRST BULBOPHYLLUM FLETCHERIANUM AWARDED IN THE USA! I was thrilled until Emly Siegrist threw cold water on me. Over the next year I talked and emailed Bulbo experts around the world from New Guinea, Signapor, Australia to London. All agreed it should be called fletcherianum. I submitted all this to the AOS but between Siegrist and Christenson they would not budge. I just love that name 'fletcherianum', it rolls of your tongue, speisii sounds like an intestinal problem.

I sharpened a wooden stake however never got close enough to Siegrist to use it on her and decided the stake was to short for Eric as he has too much protective padding on his chest.

I feel vindicated, think I will get drunk tonight to celebrate. It is good.

Nick

The orchid naming system is undoubtedly flawed compared with naming systems of other cultivated plants

Passifloras are worse! Passiflora (caerulea x quadrangularis) is given a different name from (quadrangularis x caerulea). At least orchid taxonomists keep the parentage straight. They can't even spell coerulea correctly!

And FWIW Bill Goldner at Woodstream Orchids has verified specimens of Bulbos speisii and fletcherianum. Dunno how long ago he had them verified, and what changes have been made since then, but when he had them verified they were two separate species.

They are one and the same plant with some variation within the grex. The only real difference is the label. If the tag originated in Europe, Australia or Asia it reads fletch. If it originates in the US it reads speisii. My plant only got renamed because it would have been the first awarded specimen and plant material had to be sent to the AOS. Friends of mine had and have similar plants which they named fletch then and now and because they did not get an AOS award no one ever questioned the tag.

Its all history now.

Nick

The records I find for fletcherianum show it was awarded the first time in '90 to Fuchs as spiesii, again in '96 to Fuchs, then your AM in '03, again in '04 to Missbach and in 06 to Miller for the first time under the fletcherianum name.

Enjoy your plant and award, the poor taxonomists are just trying to make a living. Some of this changing and switching of names is like trying to decide which shade of blue is the prettiest.

When checking on Den. Delicatum it is shown as a natural hybrid. The recognized name would be Den. x delicatum if wild collected but Den. Delicatum if seed grown.

The Dendrobium species is really a mess - glad I only like a few of them :>)

Brooke

I'm not really mad at the taxonomists. Eric Christenson and I actually had some laughs about this. It's all just a game and getting intense and exited about certain things is part of the fun.

I lost track of the time line but maybe my noise making and agitating did have an impact. You say my award was in 2003, I did all my letter writing and calling in 2003 to early 2005 then I gave up and forgot about the whole thing. If they changed their tune as early as 2006 then maybe they did listen.

Thanks for the input.

Nick

On a slightly different tack,IMHO, I think it's misleading to refer to clones as seedlings as they have not been grown from seed. I know a lot of growers do and use the term "young plants" for something larger. I'm not sure what very small cloned plants should be called, however. "Clonelings" will not catch on, I think.