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Nomenclature - it isn't that complicated

Joseph Clemens

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Okay -- enough is enough! :-(

I've been deeply involved with CP, since I was about twelve or thirteen years old, I'm now fifty-eight, so that's ~45 years. Even before then, I was involved with orchids, the American Orchid Society and my local AOS chapters. Orchid people were very nomenclature conscious, and it was one of the first things a new grower needed to learn, in order to communicate about orchids, in the orchid world. Through the years I discovered that many other plant groups, utilize the international naming conventions - depending on them for accurate communication. But no other plant group yet, has grex registry, though in recent years CP have gained the helpful, but little utilized facility of cultivar registry.

These days I rarely go into our Nepenthes forum, because slipshod nomenclature is so rampant in there, that even I can hardly keep track of which plants are being discussed. And I recently visited an outside forum, one dedicated to Sarracenia. It was nearly incomprehensible. All I could think of, as I scrammed out of there, was: If I have this much trouble, what would beginners think, how much trouble would they have? Probably not as much as I, since they don't usually start with great familiarity with the current international naming conventions. Despite their inherent ignorance, that would not necessarily increase their ability to accurately communicate about these plants. Just keep them uninformed about what they are missing. And then, there's communicating with others, who speak different languages, and who may even be located in different countries. Hopefully they don't resort too much to using their own coloquial names vs international nomenclature - what a compounded fiasco that could be.

Sure, much of this slipshod nomenclature is generated and fostered by commercial CP nurseries. However, I think, that if enough customers complained about it, that could even be improved. Shame on lackadaisical CP growers.
 
Sure, much of this slipshod nomenclature is generated and fostered by commercial CP nurseries. However, I think, that if enough customers complained about it, that could even be improved. Shame on lackadaisical CP growers.

I don't know if its being "lackadaisical" or what, but the chronic misrepresentation of proper names is rampant, its true. So often people tend to abbreviate Latin names and generate perverse nicknames for plants, and all it does is obfuscate any genuine data. Most unhelpful.
 
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