Congratulation on both awards....and the gorgeous flowers, that truly deserves the awards of merit!
Actually, I think you (underneath) maybe agree to some degree, Phred and Leslie?
In Europe, at least, valid clonal names are only given, when a plant is awarded - and what some local judges sometimes forget is, that the clonal name has to be documented before the actual award is handed out (the German judges, though, are very conscientious in this respect). I.e. any other clonal names than those given this way can only be considered pet-names.
I will have to consult someone with more knowledge than me (i.e. mr. Christiansen in Fredensborg, when I visit him next time), but I think this Terra Azul example is a good one to learn something from:
1) I for my part would, if I bought a plant from a professional nursery, carrying a clonal name, pressuppose, that the plant in question had been awarded (even if the award wasn't specifically mentioned). But I might be in error on this?
2) As Phred's clone of 'Terra Azul' is the awarded one, mightn't it be rather confusing for further breeding to keep the same name as all the rest from the Ching Hua batch - unless they all are results of a divsion, that is?
Well, this is at least how it works in the Paph-world - what all the Cattleya merstemming does to this is rather confusing (here logic would have prevailed, if the breeders from the onset of merristemming had used the epithet 'MC' to designate, that this plant carrying the same clonal name, actually is produced due to MC and isn't a division of the originally awarded plant! Or what you maybe would be more interested in knowing: this plant without the 'MC' designation, actually, IS a division of the originally awarded plant).
If propagated by seed the rest of the plants from Ching Hua would, if I'm not totally off the rails, be considered siblings - and can't be considered the same clones as Phred's plant. This is why we sometimes sees the epithet for a new cross described by ex. ('Terra Azul' x sib) - meaning that the clone 'Terra Azul' has been crossed with another plant, that came out of the same seed pod (= sibling). The clones, that come out of this cross would, if awarded, have to have different names than that of the (one) parent(s).
[This is one of the few instances, where I think, Sam Tsui might error, as he seems to use the designation 'x sib' as meaning, that it is the same species beeing crossed with itself. It might be the case, though, that all his sib-crosses actually are sibling crosses (i.e. crosses made by clones originating from the same pod). But I've always wondered a bit, as all his crosses, that are not the result of selfing ('x self') are described as sibling-crosses.
In writing this, I just made one genealogical stab at one of his alleged sib-crosses: Paph. rothschildianum x sib ('New Horizon' FCC/AOS x 'Raptor' GM/JOGA): the parents of 'New Horizon' are: 'Flying Eagle' x 'Green Valley' - the parents of 'Raptor': 'MM' x 'Val'.
Hence it clearly follows, that this can in no way can be a sibling cross! The correct way for Sam to designate the cross would have been: P. rothschildianum ('New Horizon' FCC/AOS x 'Raptor' GM/JOGA)]
