Orchid Facts (work in progress, not meant to be all inclusive)

Did you know?

• Orchids existed during the time of dinosaurs.  Thanks to Bob, our new board member, you can read about it at the Live Science website.

The first component should always be the Genus.  The Genus component is capitalized.  It can be abreviated and this can be confusing (more on this later).  Some of the most widely seen Genera (plural for Genus) names include Cattleya, Phalenopsis, Cymbidium, Laelia, Miltonia, Oncidium, Paphiopedilum, Pragripedum, Odontoglossum.  Looking at the Genus gives a basic idea of the growing conditions the plant may like.  Just like humans, there are exceptions though (more on this later).

The second component is either the species name or the hybrid name (sometimes refered to as "the cross"). A hybrid is the result of cross breeding two plants of different naturally occuring species or between plants that have already been crossed.  There is more to this but I hope you get the idea.  If the orchid is a species (naturally occouring in nature) this component should be not capitalized.  If the orchid is a hybrid this component should be capitalized.  The hybrid name is created by the person who first registered the cross with and organization such as the American Orchid Society.  An example of a species name is "purpurta" in the complete orchid name Laelia purpurata.  An example of a hybrid name is Laelia Golden Star.  In this case the second and third component are capitalized since the hybrid maker used two words to name the cross.

The third component indicates the 'cultivar name'.  As you can see it is surrounded by apostrophies.  An example of this would be Laelia Golden Star 'SVO'.  This indicates that the plant has probably one an award from the American Orchid Society.  This could be for a variety of reasons such as, flower size being unique, color variations in the cross, etc. The plant would have the same genetic parentage of all other Laelia Golden Star's in the world, although not specifically the actual plants.  As such propagators would cloning of the plant to maintain it's genetic uniqueness.  You would be guaranteed that the plant designated as 'SVO' would have the exact characteristics of the original plant.  Other plants designated as Laelia Golden Star may not look the same.  An example of this is humans.  Two children of the same parents may have diffent hair color but  they are both scentifically named Homo (Genus) sapiens(species).  One could be called Homo sapien 'blonde' and the other Homo sapien 'dark'.