CSA-Journal-2016-04

The Duffer's* Corner :
You Can't Tell the Players Without a Program
Part 1.
By Andy Cameron, Ph.D
No. 12
Let’s talk about the classification of
cymbidiums. Human beings classify items
to bring order into a chaotic situation.
Consider supermarkets which classify fruits
and vegetables in the Produce section and
jars of mayonnaise and mustard under Condiments.
Imagine a supermarket with its
42,000 items (average in 2014) randomly
placed on shelves and bins; then redistributed
every night. It would take literally
hours each time to find the specific items
one wanted! After you have rested up from
that thought experiment, consider further
that supermarket food categories are all
clearly separate. It would be hard to confuse
Dry Goods with Dairy, for example.
Cymbidium collections are not as various
or complicated as food stores but one still
needs a way to distinguish various species
and hybrids for culture, for judging or for
simply discussing an excellent plant.
In Duffers Corner #4 we discussed the
rules for naming species and hybrids and
where the Cymbidium genus falls within the
orchid family and seed plants more broadly.
We observed how a properly formed name
can lead to the pedigree of a hybrid all the
way back to the first primary cross. Here I
want to explore the extent of cymbidiums:
how many species are there? How are they
organized? What can we glean for this information
about breeding and culture?
For the purposes of discussion let’s
review some taxonomic terms we will need.
The name Cymbidium is a genus name, that
is, a taxonomic rank between species and
family. A genus contains species. A species
by a common definition, is a group of plants
with shared characteristics that normally
interbreed. Normally means without the aid
of humans. So if Cymbidium canaliculatum
and C. insigne never occur together they
would remain separate species even if we
transport the plants to a site and manually
pollinate one with pollinia from the other.
There are a number of divisions above
genus, the commonest being the rank of
family. Cymbidium genera are members of
the Family Orchidaceae. Below genus is
a useful term used for cymbidiums, called
section. It is an unranked term used to
organize a genus with a large number of
species. The benefit of being unranked is it
avoids adding more combinations of names.
An unranked name is not part of the formal
binomial name but can be added. For
example, Cymbidium tracyanum belongs
to the section Cyperorchis so it could be
written as Cymbidium (sect. Cyperorchis)
*Duffer, from Webster's Dictionary: An incompetent, ineffectual or clumsy person, especially a
mediocre golfer. Growing orchids isn't exactly golf. I prefer the third adjective, clumsy.
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