Post by Joseph Clemens on Dec 10, 2010 9:31:03 GMT
When I was about eleven years old I began my sojourn into ornamental horticulture with orchids (I was already an avid vegetable gardener since I was six). Little did I know, I was rubbing elbows with some of the all-time great orchid growers in Orange County, CA, where I was a member of the Orange County Orchid Society.
This may sound funny, but at the time I assumed that the grex and cultivar registration system used with orchids was standard throughout the horticulture world. [Every new hybrid is registered with a unique name; for instance Cattleya Kautskyi = (C. harrisoniana × C. warneri), and if any individuals of this hybrid Cattleya Kautskyi were found to be exceptional, they can be registered as cultivars, such as Cattleya Kautskyi 'Orange Sunset', or etc. Ever after any hybrid produced using the same parents species or grex, they would automatically carry the already registered grex name. Back crosses, to one or the other parent would qualify for a new grex name (somewhat similar, but different than the nothospecies concept in botany). I understand that a similar official naming program may soon be used with Nepenthes.]
Then my interests expanded to CP and I discovered that there was no grex registry, nor was there even a cultivar registration system in use with CP, when I first began my fascination with them and began growing them. Wow, that was quite a shock. I had completely assimilated and internalized the naming systems used with orchids, now the only names I had to use with CP were the botanical ones - however inadequate for horticulture they seemed to me, after "growing up", so to speak, with the naming systems used with orchids. So I was greatly inspired when the ICPS and in particular Jan Schlauer arranged to become the cultivar registrar for the known genera of CP. At last I would have a better way to keep track of the plants I was growing and the wonderful variations they could exhibit for someone with a discerning eye.
Well, it has improved the situation, but not as much as it potentially could or should. Too many CP growers, for their own variety of reasons, shun using the cultivar registration system, and even encourage others to do likewise.
Those who fail to use the system aren't the worst of it. Others, intentionally or unintentionally, effectively negate the usefulness of the cultivar registration process, by registering a hybrid grex as if the entire grex were a single cultivar, even if there is variation outside the published standard, exhibited by the F1 progeny. Then they distribute all those seedlings from a particular hybrid as if they were that cultivar. Others "seem" to reproduce a particular hybrid, using what may quite possibly be other clones of the same parents used in the original cross, then also distribute those plants as if the original registered cultivar name were a grex name for that hybrid combination. They make it appear as if they don't entirely understand what a "cultivar" is intended to be. The concept is rather simple, so it is difficult to believe they are not intentionally distributing plants that may superficially resemble the cultivar, simply to increase their sales. But I have no proof of this, and it is difficult to be certain.
It is my understanding that a cultivar must precisely match the published description and standard for the cultivar in question. So, I ask myself, how then did so many plants of varying characteristics become distributed in many parts of the world as Pinguicula 'Sethos' and Pinguicula 'Weser', among other cultivars of dubious identification? I may never know.
This may sound funny, but at the time I assumed that the grex and cultivar registration system used with orchids was standard throughout the horticulture world. [Every new hybrid is registered with a unique name; for instance Cattleya Kautskyi = (C. harrisoniana × C. warneri), and if any individuals of this hybrid Cattleya Kautskyi were found to be exceptional, they can be registered as cultivars, such as Cattleya Kautskyi 'Orange Sunset', or etc. Ever after any hybrid produced using the same parents species or grex, they would automatically carry the already registered grex name. Back crosses, to one or the other parent would qualify for a new grex name (somewhat similar, but different than the nothospecies concept in botany). I understand that a similar official naming program may soon be used with Nepenthes.]
Then my interests expanded to CP and I discovered that there was no grex registry, nor was there even a cultivar registration system in use with CP, when I first began my fascination with them and began growing them. Wow, that was quite a shock. I had completely assimilated and internalized the naming systems used with orchids, now the only names I had to use with CP were the botanical ones - however inadequate for horticulture they seemed to me, after "growing up", so to speak, with the naming systems used with orchids. So I was greatly inspired when the ICPS and in particular Jan Schlauer arranged to become the cultivar registrar for the known genera of CP. At last I would have a better way to keep track of the plants I was growing and the wonderful variations they could exhibit for someone with a discerning eye.
Well, it has improved the situation, but not as much as it potentially could or should. Too many CP growers, for their own variety of reasons, shun using the cultivar registration system, and even encourage others to do likewise.
Those who fail to use the system aren't the worst of it. Others, intentionally or unintentionally, effectively negate the usefulness of the cultivar registration process, by registering a hybrid grex as if the entire grex were a single cultivar, even if there is variation outside the published standard, exhibited by the F1 progeny. Then they distribute all those seedlings from a particular hybrid as if they were that cultivar. Others "seem" to reproduce a particular hybrid, using what may quite possibly be other clones of the same parents used in the original cross, then also distribute those plants as if the original registered cultivar name were a grex name for that hybrid combination. They make it appear as if they don't entirely understand what a "cultivar" is intended to be. The concept is rather simple, so it is difficult to believe they are not intentionally distributing plants that may superficially resemble the cultivar, simply to increase their sales. But I have no proof of this, and it is difficult to be certain.
It is my understanding that a cultivar must precisely match the published description and standard for the cultivar in question. So, I ask myself, how then did so many plants of varying characteristics become distributed in many parts of the world as Pinguicula 'Sethos' and Pinguicula 'Weser', among other cultivars of dubious identification? I may never know.