Quote:
Originally Posted by dnatural1
Hi, Estacion Seca
Appreciate your detailed answer. I also have a Laelia gouldiana but did not know it's status. Always believed it to be a species (which is what I collect). So if no one has ever located a specimen in the wild can the plant be labelled a species? My understanding is that for a plant to be labelled a species someone would have had to locate a specimen in the wild, collect it and lodge it in a herbarium as a reference for that species (once accepted to be a species).
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There are a few ways to look at the problem....
Nobody ever thought the plants were created, or evolved, in those people's gardens, so it would have been thought they had been wild-collected at some time in the past. But that's a conjecture. Maybe it is a hybrid originating in somebody's garden. Maybe DNA work could help sort it out at some time in the future, though there's not much money to make frm that sort of research, so it's low priority.
At one time giving a name required only publishing a name and description for the plant, and a reference to a plant, herbarium specimen or an image of the plant. Careful botanists published much more detailed information on new species, including type locality and a Latin description, but this was not required. Laelia gouldiana was published in the Gardeners' Chronicle in 1888. A lot of orchids were named this way during the Age of Exploration. Naming rules have changed.
Now the locality has to be given, a specimen must be deposited in a public herbarium, and a description must be published properly, including a Latin description of at least how this plant differs from a close relative. The purpose of the type specimen is so that other students may see exactly what the original namer meant.
Plants that were properly named under old rules are still considered to have been properly named. When the original plant material or herbarium specimen is gone, later taxonomists may assign a new type specimen and reaffirm the name. Sometimes the new type specimen is a drawing or print made of the plant near the time of the original naming, and sometimes the new type is a recently-collected herbarium specimen.
Plants known only in cultivation can be named as species. As mentioned earlier, loads of Agave species are known only from cultivation. Nowadays the person doing the naming would likely try and be pretty sure it's not a garden hybrid or selected form.
It might be that a lot of old Agave family species would not be considered species if discovered now, merely cultivars: They are only known from cultivation; many are clearly one large group of clones; and, some of them never set seed with pollen from the same species, though they can cross with other Agaves.
I wonder why there is regular Laelia gouldiana, and there is Laelia gouldiana 'Greta Garbo', which seems different from the others? People with both in their collections must have tried crossing them in the past. What happened?
After I wrote the above, I went looking to see whether I could find the original description. I did:
The Gardeners' Chronicle, Series 3, Volume 3, January 14, 1888, page 41
As you can read, Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach (the Reichenbach son, for his father was also a botanist) thought it might be a hybrid, and he made no mention whatsoever of where the plant came from. It was named after New York investment banker Jay Gould, who helped build the US railroad system.
Hybrid Mode
