Steve said: >I am not the originator of the unrecognized >sangii f. ayubiianum, and I do not mean to represent it as though I >am, or that it is infact correct or accepted. I know it isn't. But without >a more simple logos to explain it, I reprinted f. ayubiianum in hopes >that others who have specific experience with this unrecognized form >may respond.
Steve, by circulating the incorrect name you help give it substance. Why not refer to the plant as 'the so-called "forma ayubiianum" of P. sangii' ? That way you can distance yourself from the wrong name and alert any others who think they have one of these plants to the illegitimacy of the name. >What I don't understand, among many things, is why I am being >attacked ...... You've gone off the hook a bit over someone who asked >a question. Steve, you caught me at the end of a bad day. Sorry about that. I'd just wasted hours and hours doing what was supposed to be a simple 20 minute proofreading session but escalated into a major correction and rectification job. The guy (who really should have known better) had written a multipage article that used about 80 names, most of them several times over. The minority were simple species binomials ... they were OK except that italics had been applied at random. The majority of names were varieties, forms, etc, etc. There was variety gigantiflora, and later on there was forma gigantiflora. The next paragraph had variety gigantiflora forma albus, forma gigantiflorum var. album, and forma album "gigantiflora", all referring to the same taxon. And so it continued, paragraph after paragraph of pure fantasy, all dressed up in the best pseudo-scientific jargon, with italics, roman, bold, single quote-marks and double quote-marks applied apparently at random. I checked all the variations on all the names ... only one of them had been published, and it had been mis-quoted. I checked for registered cultivars, and found a couple. The rest of the names were pure invention. I corrected every correctable entry and realised that doing this simply created problems elsewhere. I tried removing the illegitimate names, but the article ended up so badly gutted it no longer made sense. The author (of course) was not available to give assistance, so I eventually knuckled down and re-wrote his whole bl**dy piece for him. It took hours. When he finally sees the article, do you think he'll thank me for generously donating my time & effort to save his face ? Not a chance .... he'll be too busy telling everyone what an insufferable stroppy know-it-all bastard I am. Then I got home, read your OGD posting, and thought "ENOUGH !!!!!" IT IS TIME ALL THIS NONSENSE STOPPED AND PEOPLE STARTED USING NAMES PROPERLY". That's why I bit. Actually, I still do think it is time everyone started using names properly, and started checking names before they use them. It is easy to do. Cheers, Peter O'Byrne Singapore _______________________________________________ the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD) [email protected] http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
