Paphiopedilum Yang-ji Hawk

Slippertalk Orchid Forum

Help Support Slippertalk Orchid Forum:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
All but a couple of the awards to Johanna Burkhardt are clearly WBW. Anitum and adductum are very different plants when grown side by side and breed differently as well, with anitum consistently producing better quality offspring. If they are lumped into one species then so should be lowii and haynaldianum and all the Cochlopetalum should be one species too.
I'll take that correction. I haven't grown many adductum or anitum. But somebody needs to get those awards fixed...
 
If they are lumped into one species then so should be lowii and haynaldianum and all the Cochlopetalum should be one species too.
You got me sold on doing that as well 😊

Jokes aside, I wonder what the genetic separation would be if all paph species were sequenced.
 
You got me sold on doing that as well 😊

Jokes aside, I wonder what the genetic separation would be if all paph species were sequenced.
That is a harder question than it sounds... sequencing is easy (and cheap compared to when I was doing it), but it is a boundary problem. Still need to draw lines between species, and nature doesn't really do lines, it is always a bit (or a lot) blurry at the edges. DNA is great info, but it runs into the same blur at the borders between species.
 
There are splitters and there are lumpers, and then there are the plants which look great either way.
 
Beautiful!

Is it possible that it is a sand x adductum cross? How would one know the difference?
By the black colouring of the (mainly lower part of the dorsal) that anitum seems to breed through with in hybridization... Wössner Black Wings vs Johanna Burkhardt is another example.

You would have to be blind not to see this in Darlene's wonderful flowers - or be one of the morrons of the Australian Orchid Council, who have awarded all the awarded WBW as JB, hereby neglecting the RHS registrar, considered the authority in matters of identification of (registered) hybrids by the rest of the world!
 
Now now, no need to name call people. There are many great judges in AOC.

The politics itself is another issue. These politic problems are global lol.
I'm so sorry, if I offended anyone's sensibilities. For that I apologise and rephrase my lexast post as follows:
"There are splitters and there are lumpers, and then there are the ....... of AOC!"

I'm sure, that there are many splendid judges in the AOC (of which the many well deserved awards going David Judge's (emydura's) way are a clear proof). But what makes my blood boil, can't be described as politics, but will have to require a bit of patience on your part to be explained.

When it comes to taxonomy and botanical nomenclatura, there are rules to follow as to what concerns the identification and description of species - this doesn't prevent a lively scientific debate among botanists, and a lot of opinions among the rest of us, about the taxonomic status of a variety of plants. In the end, hopefully, the best arguments win (though, sometimes this isn't the case, and one might have to wait for the next generation of botanists to rectify the errors or uncertainities).

With hybrids there is a reason, why orchid growers/breeders, collectors, and connoisseurs since the 19th century tried to establish some order by making lists of names of known hybrids. Sander's list of hybrids originated in 1906, and thereafter, over the next half century or so, had been thoroughly compiled and extended, until the RHS in the 1960's took over the operation of registering and keeping record internationally of orchid hybrids (for a short, but more comprehensive overview of this history see the attached document).

Wössner Black Wings is registered in the International Register of Orchid Hybrids (IROH) as a cross between P. rothschildianum and P. anitum. The AOC decided singlehandedly to identify awarded WBWs as Johanna Burkhardts, which the IROH has listed as the cross between P. rothschildianum and P. adductum. They did this by referring to KEW's 'Plants of the World'. KEW's list concerns itself with species, and has sunk anitum into synonymity with adductum - a position that is debated among botanists, where many consider anitum at least a variety of adductum, if not a species in its own right.
The AOC by its actions undermines the IROH, the only internationally recognised tool to keep track of orchid  hybrids.

Whether this is due to arrogance, based on ignorance, or just plain and simple arrogance, I can't determine. The only proper way to have proceeded for the AOC would have been to have contacted the registrar at the RHS, and discuss the matter with him or her, before taking action. Probably the most viable solution, due to the current debatable taxonomic status of anitum and adductum, respectively, would be to re-register P. Johanna Burkhardt as a cross between P. rothschildianum and P. adductum var. adductum; and P. Wössner Black Wings as P. rothschildianum x P. adductum var. anitum.

To reduce the above to "politics" or relativise it to just "a matter of different opinions" seems to me to be yet another step in the wrong direction, when it comes to the current efforts by some to undermine a ruleregulated order of international affairs - admittedly, though, in the realm of plants not with so dire and dangerous consequences as when it comes to questions of sovereignty, human rights or potential war crimes!
 

Attachments

  • Significant-developments-in-orchid-hybrid-history (1).pdf
    15.2 KB
Last edited:
Australia is in a different hemisphere and may or may not follow the other hemisphere’s rules of a colonial nation. 😏

Perhaps your calm logic may convince them.
 
Jens, I think most paph growers believe they are not the same but are bound, in judging terms, by the rules. Most of us 'co-record' the parentage so if there's ever a change of rules we could 'unwind' the JB/WBW mess.
Stephen, good at least the growers keep JB and WBW apart... Interestingly, in Europe they are judged as two different hybrids, and judges here seem to be bound by the registrar of the International Register of Orchid Hybrids.... I wonder, though, what rules allow for not following the IROH, when it comes to hybrids?!
 
I grew the original JB's back over 20 years ago, the parents have Jamboree clone names. They were harder to grow and touchy. Possibly the breeding and the plants used. But comparing the WBW (for want of a better name or not getting into a pointless argument ), and using the Anitum breeding lines, these are much faster-growing and stronger plants, in my conditions. With such stunning flowers.
 
Back
Top