The strange case of Phragmipedium × talamancanum. An international story of conservation and taxonomy
revista divulgativa
Date
2019Author
Díaz Morales, Melissa
Pupulin, Franco
Metadata
Show full item recordAbstract
The importance of cultivated plants
in the discovery and the description of
orchid diversity cannot be overestimated.
During the 19th century and the beginning
of the last century, the fundamental task
of exploring the richest regions in orchid
flora around the world was essentially
carried out by the great horticultural
firms, which provided the botanists with
an uninterrupted flow of novelties to
be described and revealed to science.
Although to a lesser extent, private
collections, as well as the trained eyes
of their owners, still continue to play an
important role in the discovery of family
diversity. In more recent years, with the
spread of a generalized culture attentive
to the problems of the sustainable use of
natural resources, the orchid collectors
discovered a new vocation aimed at
conservation. In many cases private
collections have been an important tool
for the conservation ex situ of the rarest
and most threatened orchid species;
these species are important even when
they are not the primary source of
germplasm for the reproduction and
reintroduction of species in their natural
habitats. Particularly rare, however, is the
case of cultivated plants that have served
at the same time to preserve rare taxa and
to clarify old problems of nomenclature.
The story we present here represents one
of these rare cases, and is made more
significant by the fact that it involves a
large number of different protagonists in
two distant countries.
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- Biología [1644]