Orchid names. What does all the Gobbledygook on that label actually mean? There are names with capital letters, without capital letters; there are quotations, parentheses, forward slashes, dashes, ex's and brackets. Oh my, I think I covered them all! Actually, all those words and punctuation marks are very important and in many cases, very misunderstood.

Orchids are among the world's largest family of flowering plants with species found on every major continent, accept the Antarctica. With that, comes a plethora of names that can often get confusing and intimidating. To better understand what all of it means, I am going to attempt to simplify basic orchid nomenclature and also stress the importance of keeping that information safe and correct. Following these simple guidelines will help you better understand how these names play an important role in plant identification.

Let's start at the beginning. Using Paphiopedilum villosum 'Chuck's Warrior' AM/AOS as an example. Starting with the name of the genus, in this case Paphiopedilum, think of the genus as the surname of your orchid. This is always presented as the very first name on an orchid label and should always begin with a capital letter. In the past, labels were often hand written and with that, the name of the genus was often abbreviated, such as in Paph. Today, with our modern printers, orchid labels are easily printed by the thousands, which makes writing long genus names like Paphiopedilum a real breeze. Here at our nursery, we strive to spell out all genera names to make plant identification clear and simple.

Next after the genus comes the species name (a naturally occurring variety) or the hybrid name (a man made variety). In the case of a species orchid, the name begins as a lower case letter, such as in villosum. In the case of the hybrid name, the first letter is always capitalized and so would any other subsequent proper names involved, such as in Jewel Box. Names containing words such as 'of,' 'and,' 'or,' are not proper names and usually do not begin with a capitalized letter, such as in Ports of Paradise. This use of upper and lower case letters is one way for an average person to distinguish a hybrid from a species with just a glance.

Following a hybrid or species name is often a clonal name. These names always begin with capitals, much in the same manner as the hybrid name. One very important distinguishing feature of a clonal name is that it is always encompassed in single quotation marks, such as in 'Chuck's Warrior'. A clonal name can be given to an individual orchid to designate it apart from others of its kind, or to honor an award that the plant may have received.

If your particular orchid has an award granted by one of the orchid award entities, it would then be noted in abbreviated form immediately following the clonal name, such as in 'Chuck's Warrior' AM/AOS. This particular award designation is from the American Orchid Society and suggests that this plant has received an Award of Merit, which is just one of many award brackets given by the AOS.

So, let's have a recap of the species name I used as an example above:

Paphiopedilum is the genus.

villosum is the name of the species.

'Chuck's Warrior' is the clonal name.

AM/AOS is the abbreviated award designation of Award of Merit/American Orchid Society.

Your label would be laid out like this:
Paphiopedilum
villosum
'Chuck's Warrior' AM/AOS

Here I will use an example of an orchid hybrid label:

Sophrolaeliocattleya is the genus.

Jewel Box is the registered hybrid name.

'Dark Waters' is the clonal name.

HCC/AOS is the abbreviated award designation of Highly Commended Certificate/American Orchid Society.

Your label would be laid out like this:

Sophrolaeliocattleya

Jewel Box

'Dark Waters' HCC/AOS

This is a very condensed and simplified dissertation of orchid nomenclature and labeling. There is so much more I could write about in this very complex subject. I am not a taxonomical expert, nor does one really need to be. I just want to stress the importance of understanding what these basic names mean and how they should be presented in your labeling. It is also very important that you have redundancy with the names of your plants in the off case that your labels go missing, break apart or become illegible. I always recommend to our customers to keep a backup record of their inventory with the full name of the plant, date and place it was purchased and how much you paid for it. Well, maybe you don't really want to keep the part about how much you paid for it!

Happy growing!

Chuck Acker