With all the name changes by taxonomists (please be nice I am a taxonomist in training) it is hard to keep up with the name changes. Such changes as the Brazilian Laelia species being transferred to Sophronitis and Cattleya aurantiacum and C. skinneri being transferred to Guarianthe have been major changes.
This is a p.i.a. to the hobbyist orchid grower and a nightmare to commercial growers. It may seem wily nilly but there are rules that describe what can be done in taxonomy. Here I need to expand the discussion a bit.
When an orchid is described a type specimen is produced. In other words this is the specimen on which the species is based. This can be a dried specimen mounted on paper, an alcohol preserved specimen, or in some rare cases a drawing or painting with significant details. From that point on all future orchids of that species will have the same species name. When a species is described it carries the genus name (Capitalized and italicized), species name (just italicized), and the name of the author or authors who described it. Well that seems simple enough... Actually not really...
Sometimes an orchid is described and a later taxonomist believes it belongs to another genus. What happens is this author transfers the existing species to the new genus. When a species is transferred to a new genus the author or authors name is added to the mix. The original author's or authors' name is placed in parentheses, and the name of the author or authors transferring the species is added to the end of the name. When this happens the old genus and species name becomes a synonym of the new combination. A point to remember is that some species have been transferred several times. Below is an example: Vanda alpina (Lindley) Lindley Luisia alpina Lindley was described in 1838. Vanda alpina (Lindley) Lindley was published in 1853. Stauropsis alpina (Lindley) Tang & Wang was published in 1951. Trudelia alpina (Lindley) Garay was published in 1986.
In the above example the species was described, by Lindley, as Luisia alpina. Lindley then later transferred it to Vanda as Vanda alpina (Lindley) Lindley. Stauropsis alpina came about when the authors Tang and Wang transferred alpina to the genus Stauropsis. Lastly Garay transferred it to Trudelia. In the above example, Vanda alpina (Lindley) Lindley is the accepted name. The remaining names are then listed as a synonym of Vanda alpina (Lindley) Lindley. This is how botanist come up with the names that are used. There are many different things that can happen to a name, but the orchid growers need not worry about these, I'll deal with those.
So how do you know which name to use??? Name changes are usually published in big high and might science journals, a place rarely visited by the common orchid grower. However there is a website that lists all published orchid species with all the various synonyms.
* if the link does not work, go to google and type in Kew Monocot Checklist. This will lead you to the same site.
This is easy to use. If you know the genus and species great, but correct spelling is a must. What I do is simply type in the genus name, in this case Vanda, and then hit search. When this is done all species ever published in Vanda are listed. In this case there are 172 species listed. However only the species in bold face type are accepted, so Vanda has only 53 species. The remaining names have been transferred elsewhere. The concept of forms, varieties, and subspecies will be discussed in a future news letter.