What type is mine?

[RoseSD]

How do we find out what class of dendrobium do ours belong to from the following five?
5 distinct groups: Dendrobium phalaenopsis, Dendrobium spatulata, Dendrobium latouria, Dendrobium formosae, and simply Dendrobium.

[Roberta]

Take a look at IOSPE under Dendrobium. The section is also identified on each species.If you are looking for information on care, look up the species... geographical origin - country and elevation - can tell you a lot. For hybrids, you need to look up the parentage... every registered hybrid has a "pedigree" back to the component species. A very good free source is orchidroots.com

[estación seca]

There are a lot more than five classes of Dendrobium. There's an old sticky thread in the Dendrobium forum here about the Six Horticultural Groups of Dendrobium and that's also outdated and incorrect. Mods - should it become unstuck so it's harder to find and misunderstand?

You will learn a tremendous amount taking Roberta's suggestion and just reading everything on Dendrobium on IOSPE.

[Roberta]

Adding to what ES has stated... Dendrobium is a huge genus, and so the classifications are complicated. (So trying to see it in simple terms is an exercise in futility. Another way of putting it, "Vast problems don't have half-vast solutions") If you want to understand the orchids in your own collection, you need to get down to the species level (or the component species of a hybrid)... any "summary" will give you an average at best... which is likely to be misleading or flat wrong for a particular plant.

[camille1585]

Originally Posted by estación seca

There are a lot more than five classes of Dendrobium. There's an old sticky thread in the Dendrobium forum here about the Six Horticultural Groups of Dendrobium and that's also outdated and incorrect. Mods - should it become unstuck so it's harder to find and misunderstand?

You will learn a tremendous amount taking Roberta's suggestion and just reading everything on Dendrobium on IOSPE.

If we're in agreement that's it's outdated and no longer relevant, then it's easy enough for me to un sticky the thread. I'll let Den experts make that call, this genus is not my area of expertise!

[Roberta]

Originally Posted by camille1585

If we're in agreement that's it's outdated and no longer relevant, then it's easy enough for me to un sticky the thread. I'll let Den experts make that call, this genus is not my area of expertise!

I'd say that it's obsolete...I'm no expert, but the genus is huge and complicated and there is lots of new work on it.