Australian Orchid Foundation

<< BACK TO PROJECT LIST

Project: 361/2024

Title: Attendance at Orchid Hybrid Registration Advisory Committee meeting in London 2024
Applicant: Ian Chalmers 

 

Nomenclature Rules Regarding Intra Specific Ranks

In accordance with the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP) the definition of a grex (hybrid) is:

“grex (plural: grexes, or greges in classical Latin) a formal category used in orchid nomenclature and applied to the progeny of an artificial cross from specified parents at species or grex level (ICNCP Art.4).”

This definition is the foundational cornerstone of the Hybrid Registration System impacting judging and nomenclature of orchids through out the world. It has been the accepted convention and practice in ICNCP for over 70 years and was ratified at the World Orchid Conference in Longbeach in 1961.

There is pressure building from various sources to change this definition to include infra specific ranks as parents.

The project is to present the arguments to maintain and enforce the current definition to reduce the number of anomalies and reassign recent anomalies as synonyms.

The issue is that without this definition it is likely that any orchid can be registered without any restrictions.

Some of the recent anomalies include:

  1. Den. Curvi Gold: speciosum var. speciosum x Den. speciosum var. curvicaule
    an example of infra specific (varieties) accepted as parents in contravention of Art 4.3 and the definition on page 148 ICNCP.
  2. Pepe Portilla: Den. agathodaemonis x Den. cuthbertsonii
    an example of synonyms accepted as parents in contravention of Art 4.3 ICNCP
  3. Previously registered – teretifolium x Den. dolichophyllum = Den. Anthedon Splendour
    an example of synonyms accepted as parents in contravention of Art 4.3 ICNCP
  4. Burana Twist – both parents unknown – contravenes Art 27.4 ICNCP
  5. Akaishi = Den. tanii X Den. victoriae-reginae
     an example of a cultivar ‘Tanii’ used as a parent in contravention of Art 4.3 ICNCP   

If these examples become the norm, then all line bred species become hybrids. This will result in a massive dislocation of the nomenclature system.

The orchid societies that use the nomenclature system would need to consider how they accommodate any new definition.