Hi Leo,
With Sophronitis (in the traditional sense), I'm under
the impression that we are looking at adaptations for
pollination by hummingbirds, hence the small labellum,
red color, and lack of fragrance. If the genus is
based on those features, it should probably ring alarm
bells so that we are wary of parallel evolution. My
understanding is that the molecular data does suggest
that's the case with Sophronitis, since S. cernua and
the other species don't form a monophyletic group.
You point out the importance of horticultural
information, and it is perhaps significant that S.
cernua has very different cultural requirements than
the other "Sophronitis" species. Presumably, the
shared flower characteristics have evolved twice, a
situation that was not easily detectable by
morphology.
Since the molecular data had Sopronitis (and several
other genera) nesting within species that had
traditionally been called Laelia, there were two
options: split Laelia into a bunch of little genera
or lump a bunch of traditional genera together. It's
a judgment call, I guess, but at least lumping would
result in more stable nomenclature given the imperfect
data that is available. If you have a large, broadly
defined genus, you don't need to rename everything
when new data requires re-aligning the smaller groups.
So, I guess I'd consider the attempt to place all the
Brazilian Laelias into Sophronitis as imperfect but
reasonable, given the available data.
Nick
____________________________________________________________________________________
Boardwalk for $500? In 2007? Ha! Play Monopoly Here and Now (it's updated for
today's economy) at Yahoo! Games.
http://get.games.yahoo.com/proddesc?gamekey=monopolyherenow
_______________________________________________
the OrchidGuide Digest (OGD)
[email protected]
http://orchidguide.com/mailman/listinfo/orchids_orchidguide.com
