> From: Bruce Lee Bednar
Jan is correct in the laws of taxon however the rules weren't always used in
the past. For example, victorian plants: several similar-looking siblings
were given various hybrid names to sell more expensive plants to the rich.
Even today, the Japanese do not follow the rules - if they make a hybrid
already made and named, they just put their own hybrid name on it.
If a plant comes to you obviously mislabeled most leave it that way. The
error is passed on and on. If it is instead named N. x 'unknown hybrid', we
would have many plants out there like this and it would be too confusing. To
give it a new name would _not_ be proper as somewhere the plant has a proper
identification: as Jan indicated, N. x hookeriana would always be rafflesiana
x ampullaria, but if you have a raff * mirabilis in your hand, and the label
says "hookeriana", then something needs to be done - you don't pass it on and
compound the problem.
The line drawings in the early "Gardener's Chronicle" and description of
N. x hookeriana 'cultivated type' is _identical_ to today's collected
forms. The 'old victorian' form that was in Europe for 100 years as
well as at Longwood Gardens and is in many collections around the world
and was used in numerous hybrid crosses does not look like hookeriana at
all, but the line drawing and description tells a different story - it's
N. x 'intermedia' - a variety of the dominii cross - properly called N.
x dominii var. intermedia. This plant appears in many collections
under an assortment of dubious names - hookeriana, courtii, intermedia,
balfouriana, etc. Most collections have it as hookeriana, but N. x
intermedia is what it is - and BOTH male and female clones (siblings)
exist.
So,
1. The dominii 'intermedia' clones we have in cultivation positively
match the descriptions and line drawings of the times.
2. The only N. hirsuta in cultivation up until the late 1970's was a single
victorian clone, an ugly lime-green small-pitcher form, which recently in the
1980's has been replaced in collections by much more colorful and larger
forms.
3. You are not changing the parentage of N. x dominii since the original
description calls it a raff x "small green species" - all you are doing
is naming the unidentified parent plant. This changes nothing - it was
"only speculated" by Macfarlane that MAYBE gracilis was the parent - we
have crossed gracilis and raff in cultivation as well as collected wild
forms - non are similar AT ALL to N. x dominii intermedia, so gracilis
is obviously incorrect.
Back to Marcel Lecoufle's hybrid N. x boissiense, it had been written that the
superba was the old victorian cross of hybrida and hookeriana, this was a
mistake made in a list made by Ron Fleming back in 1979 and its reappeared
over and over again in reference books. The male plant used in Lecoufle's
cross was N. x superba - that is N. * mixta var. superba (northiana * maxima).
The female plant was a gracilis-looking plant that had been in the nursery for
decades - it turned out to be N. distillatoria. Lecoufle had two variations
in the siblings - N. x boissiense has green leaves and medium sized long
pitchers that look just like mixta. It is rare in cultivation. Then N. x
boissiense var. rubra look more like the distillatoria parent - has reddish
stem, brown/red leaves, and a brown/orange small pitchers - hence the rubra
name. Both, of course, are the same plant just different clones. The rubra
is the common form.
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