Naming of new hybrids

[Orchidflowerchild]

Originally Posted by shakkai

In an attempt to get back on-topic... I just bought a Sophronitis purpurea at a recent show - so some nurseries have already made the name change, it seems.

Has anyone read the paper that give the new classification? What justification was used to lump these with Sophronitis? Just curious!

Genetic analysis and cladistics. Of course, it is pretty easy to swing cladistic analysis if you chose the wrong outgroup, the wrong section of DNA, etc, etc.

For my part, I prefer a combined approach including cladistics and comparative anatomy. If you want to look into another reorganization of the Laeliinae, I posted a link to a paper by Chiron and Castro which reclassifies the Laelias differently, somewhere in the cattleya alliance section. I suppose you could google the paper. Despite the fact that it splits Laelias (and the high-mountain Sophs) into five or six genera, I think it is a MUCH more logical system.

But then, I am and always have been a splitter.

-Cj