The Home Garden

How are orchids named?

This proves to be a headache for most orchid cultivators.  Not to mention a headache for the orchid enthusiast who perhaps receives an orchid gift and no name attached to it.  If one is so lucky to receive an orchid with its full nomenclature, then the headache continues if one does not know what and how a name is given to an orchid. Since orchid hybrids are the most commonly cultivated orchids, it is fully understandable that the hybridizer gets to name the orchid when they register the orchid at the orchid authorities that are in those countries where they reside.  Orchid identification is usually by means of a grex name. Grex is a Greek word that means either flock or group.  Grex can refer to all offspring as well as subsequent offspring of hybrid crosses when applied to orchids.

It does not matter whether your orchid is cultivated from seed, or cuttings, or keiki.  It also does not matter which form, shape and color your orchids are.  All orchid offspring must have a common lineage, a common parentage from whence they were hybridized.  Hence they can all be classified as members of a common grex.

All the orchid cultivars can have individual names, but when they are classified, the grex name will precede the cultivar name. For example:  Doritaenopsis Red Pearl ‘Barbara Ann’, where the grex name is Red Pearl.

Over decades, and dare I say over centuries, orchids have gained the reputation that they are mysterious plants. In fact it was thought that orchids are freak plants and even extraordinary plants. Orchid collectors have grown into a habit of fabricating wild and wonderfully weird stories about the orchids, how they came about collecting those specific orchids, and the rarity of the orchids that they are collecting. These weird tall tales were told by these collectors with a specific aim – to protect their collections of orchids and to prevent other collectors from also collecting the same type of orchid and maybe even better ones. Often these tall tales threw other collectors off the real trail. They really aimed to keep the mystery going.

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