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Greetings,
I am have been involved in the orchid business for a few years and I am relatively new to the carnivorous world. Being a orchidist, I love labels on my plants, in fact if a plant doesn't have a label it usually doesn't hang out in my collection or greenhouses. Now step into the CP world. The orchid world uses the system of RHS. The thing I find confusing is the use of 'cultivar' names. Like the prestigous 'Leah Wilkerson'. In the orchid world it would be labelled Sarracenia Moorei 'Leah Wilkerson'. Species would be listed as lower case, and hybrids start with a capital letter. Now I am trying to be understanding and accept this whole new labelling system (to me). Am I alone in this personal dilema? I have even had a vendor suggest I buy a plant that wasn't labelled, and asked why I needed a label of what it was... I am not sure why I need them to have labels. I understand that natural or human-made hybrids occur in nature and in cultivation. Is this something I need to just get over? I love this new world of botany, but find the labelling a bit frustrating. Sorry for my 15 second rant....
T-D
 
I understand what you are saying T-D but the way I look at it is, most of the time humans are going to pollinate the orchids and in doing so they will be certain of what cross was made. In the carnivorous world (esp with sarracenia) natural pollinators take care of some of the work unless precautions are taken to stop them. My plants for example are grown outdoors year round. When springtime comes around and the flowers come up I don't really make any attempt to pollinate anything, the bumblebees do it all for me. Once that happens I cannot attempt to make a guess at what the plants parents are for at least a few years, and even when it makes it's mature pitchers I can never be certain of who the father was ( sounds like some daytime talk shows when I put it like that ) and even when I think I know that a particular plant is moorei, I cannot be certain it has not been back-crossed. ( Sometimes they can't tell this when they see the hybrids in the wild either) One last thing you need to consider is that in the wild 95% of these plants do not meet. Normally only 2, maybe 3 of their ranges cross, now when we enthusiasts collect them we not only have many species/forms/variations in our collections, BUT we also have hybrids that will readily cross with each other and the species. This is what makes labeling some plants so difficult....
 
CP growers are just as susceptible to OCD as orchid growers and the same rules apply in labeling and some people take the same shortcuts when filling out a label.

I don't have any interest in hybrid CPs, just like I had no interest in hybrid orchids when I was more into those. That said, there are many natural hybrids of each and, deep down, I think the taxonomists have run amok in identifying some as separate species. I'm more of a lumper than a splitter and (mostly) believe all Sarracenias are different strains of the same species. Sometimes, in my more divisive moments, I think of S. purpurea as being a separate species, at least the northern one.

I'm OK with our way of dividing Sarrs into several species because I hope it offers more legal protection than some would get otherwise. If we had a perfectly accurate genetic test of Sarracenia ancestry, I suspect we'd never find examples of S. leucophylla, rubra etc. that didn't include the others in its recent (few hundred generations) past. I have more confidence in the "purity" of S. purpurea, at least of those in the middle of somewhere like Newfoundland. It's telling that the purps look different (venosa) close to and within the range of their southern relatives.

No matter what their parentage is or how they're named, I like the Sarracenia species. As happens with orchids, the hybridizers try to gild the lily and lose what was good about the original.
 
T-D your not the only one that is OCD about labeling. I do the same thing with my orchids but I had to get over it with CPs because they are just not as strict about it here. Take nepenthes for example. Red dragon is a certain cross, but they will take several different clones from a batch and label them N. Red Dragon, but to me if it has a name Red dragon they all should be he same. It gets a little confusing to me, but I love CPs so I will continue to grow them.
 
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