Classifying orchids

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Originally Posted by rangiku

Hi Ann,

A great book to begin with is William Cullina's Understanding Orchids. For a book specific to Phalaenopsis, Steven Frowine's Moth Orchids: The Complete Guide to Phalaenopsis is very nice with lots of color photos.

I concur.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Originally Posted by Phal in love

I am trying to understand where the branching into different types occurs...

It splits after Orchidaeceae.

The subfamilies of orchids are:

Apostasioideae

Cypripedioideae

Vanilloideae

Epidendroideae

Orchidoideae

Most people are very familiar with orchids in:

Cypripedioideae (the group that includes plants collectively known as "Slipper Orchids")

Vanilloideae (Vanillas)

Epidendroideae (pretty much everything else that most people are aware of)

Some people are aware of orchids in:

Orchidoideae (orchids such as Anacamptis, Dactylorhiza, Orchis, Ophrys, Galearis, Platanthera, Habenaria, and Disa - if you look at photos of them, you'll start noticing how they share certain similar morphological traits to one another)

Most people are not aware that orchids in Apostasioideae (orchids that have retained the most primitive features in the family) even exist.

Originally Posted by Phal in love

...where hybrids are created.

I'm not quite sure I understand what you mean here...

Can you be more specific with the wording of your inquiry?

[Phal in love]

Oh, oh, oh! My inner nerd is squealing with delight! This is such great information for me, and you guys have both explained it very clearly.

My question about hybrids is "where" in the classification hybrids occur. With the info you have already given me I see that hybrids are a cross between two [or more] species.

Do crosses occur higher than species to species? It seems that I have seen reference to orchids that are a cross between phalaenopsis and something else.

Most of my orchids are "NOID." So I guess the proper way to refer to them are as unnamed hybrid phalaelopsis?

[I never took Latin, but I was the gal in class who LOVED diagraming sentences!]

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Originally Posted by Phal in love

Oh, oh, oh! My inner nerd is squealing with delight! This is such great information for me, and you guys have both explained it very clearly.

My question about hybrids is "where" in the classification hybrids occur. With the info you have already given me I see that hybrids are a cross between two [or more] species.

Do crosses occur higher than species to species? It seems that I have seen reference to orchids that are a cross between phalaenopsis and something else.

Most of my orchids are "NOID." So I guess the proper way to refer to them are as unnamed hybrid phalaelopsis?

[I never took Latin, but I was the gal in class who LOVED diagraming sentences!]

Hybridization between species does occur in nature, but not at the rate at which humans have made it become.

In other words, hybridization is relatively less common than conspecific breeding in the wild, but it does exist.

Three examples of natural hybrids are:

Phal x gernotii

Phal x intermedia

Phal x leucorrhoda

The "x" is not pronounced as a "x". It is the symbol for the word "cross".

Intergeneric breeding in the wild, may not even exist for several reasons, but if it does, it is extremely rare.

Humans have made intergeneric hybridization a common occurrence.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Man-made hybrids are put on a slightly different roster.

The normal classification ends at the genus level.

The cultivar names and grex names take over from there.


Be aware that there was once a period of time when man-made hybrids have been assigned species-like names. This will make things confusing in research.

I hope that giving man-made hybrids species type names is a thing of the past and will never be continued again. It is misleading and can cause problems in finding out correct information.

[Tindomul]

Excellent explanation by all. Would just like to add my 2 cents.
Instead of phylum, it is customary to use Division when dealing with plants, and I think fungi, and maybe some blue green algae.
Kingdom, Division, Class.... etc.
I always tell my students, King Philips Class Out For Good Sex, or King David's Class Out For Good Sex, as a way for them to remember it all.

And a species is not really lobbii or appendiculata or javanica. Its always, always a binomial. So a proper species name always carries the genus name and then the species epithet.
lobbii by itself does not tell you what plant you are talking about. There are many plants out there with the species epithet lobbii.

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Originally Posted by Tindomul

And a species is not really lobbii or appendiculata or javanica. Its always, always a binomial. So a proper species name always carries the genus name and then the species epithet.
lobbii by itself does not tell you what plant you are talking about. There are many plants out there with the species epithet lobbii.

That's true.

[Tindomul]

Thanks King, your info is always amazing!
One last thing I caught,
if you are writing a species name by hand, obviously you can't italicize unless you are talented.
What you do is underline the name leaving an non-underlined space between genus and species epithet.
So you would write as
Haraella odorata
not
Haraella odorata

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Originally Posted by Tindomul

Instead of phylum, it is customary to use Division when dealing with plants, and I think fungi, and maybe some blue green algae.
Kingdom, Division, Class.... etc.

I got confused here myself. Thank you. Good to know.

Originally Posted by Tindomul

One last thing I caught,
if you are writing a species name by hand, obviously you can't italicize unless you are talented.
What you do is underline the name leaving an non-underlined space between genus and species epithet.
So you would write as
Haraella odorata
not
Haraella odorata

Interesting!

[King_of_orchid_growing:)]

Oh, yeah...

Always capitalize the hybrid name.

Always lower case for the species name.

Again, the problem is distinguishing hybrids from species if the situation of a species-like hybrid name pops up. It makes life so much easier.


You want an example of a species-like hybrid name?

Ok, you got it!

Here it is:

Epi. Burtonii

There are others...