This cultivar it termed ‘Nigrescens’.
Photo: IanWalters
The cultivar ‘Alba’ lacks the bright red on the
undersideof the leaves. Photo: IanWalters
The cultivar ‘Odina’ has a strongly branched
central vein.
Photo: IanWalters
The form ‘Dawsoniana’ is one of the most
commonlyavailablecultivarsoftheJewelOrchid.
Drawing from theoriginal descriptionof
Ludisiadiscolor
.
The flowersof all thevariants and cultivarsof the Jewel Orchidare similar.
apparently fairly common in the wild, and
variable such thatmore than 30 synonyms
exist today.
The formmost frequentlyseen incultivation
is ‘Dawsoniana’, a cultivar (ie a form that
arose under cultivation by humans) in
which the leaves exhibit five silver-colored
veins.
Namesofcultivated forms
Just as in zoology, the precise naming of
cultivated forms sometimes presents
considerable difficulties. There are no
binding rules, only recommendations as to
howsuchplantsshouldbecorrectlynamed.
Unfortunately the majority of gardeners
don’t even adhere to those.Thus a cultivar
should, if possible be given a name that
doesn’t sound like Latin, so that it isn’t
confused with a scientific name. Now, in
Ludisiadiscolor
that remains a pipe dream,
as all the cultivars of the species sound like
they have scientific names. In addition one
should make a habit of always writing
cultivarnameswith singlequotationmarks,
in normal script (not italics as in scientific
names),and startingwitha capital letter, to
makeclearwhat theyare.
In
Ludisiadiscolor
inparticular,suchcultivars
tend to occur spontaneously and are then
propagated and selected further by the
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