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  Re: [Aroid-l] Alocasia Amazonica
From: Alistair Hay <ajmhay at hotmail.com> on 2009.11.19 at 23:51:31(20338)
IMO what we really need to do is to let these hybrid botanical names slide into complete disuse as historical curiosities.

Part of the problem is that there is so much confusing orthography (they way they are written), and it is not clear if names being used are (or are intended to be) botanical hybrid names (under the Botanical Code), cultivar names (under the Cultivated Code - ICNCP) or something else (outside the codes), and therefore to what plant or plants they should refer. If botanical hybrid names are used, then there will be endless (pointless) discussion about which definition of these hybrids should be adopted (particularly in this A. longiloba complex where they may be legitimate disagreement about what species can or cannot be recognized and hence how the hybrids are defined) and which of the several hybrid binomials has priority.

The correct orthography for a cultivar name is Alocasia 'Amazonica' : the genus (i.e. the denomination class) is italicized, and the cultivar epithet is non-italicized, in single quotes and starts with a capital letter. This indicates unequivocally that the entity is a cultivar whose definition and naming is determined under the Cultivated Code  (ICNCP). The definition of this cultivar is not specified by its parentage. For practical purposes it is simply plants that match Salvadore Mauro's plant. A variant arising from, say, somaclonal mutation in the tissue culture of A. 'Amazonica' can be selected, propagated and named something else if it has proven to be stable, such as A. 'Polly'. The parentage of A. 'Amazonica' is a piece of adjunct information that may be useful for hybridizers to know, but doesn't have any direct bearing on the definition of the cultivar, and so opinions about what the parents were (if there were no or dubious records) or, in this case, whether Alocasia watsoniana is a "good" species or not, are irrelevant and need not complicate the question of what is A. 'Amazonica'.

On the other hand the recognition of the hybrid 'species' Alocasia x amazonica (with the correct orthography of italics for both the genus and the species epithet, and the epithet starting with a lower case letter, and the genus and species separated by a multiplication sign, all to signify a hybrid 'species' under the Botanical Code) opens up a raft of hideous complications. First, the botanical hybrid IS defined by its parentage, so what is it? Alocasia watsoniana x A. sanderiana, or A. longiloba x A. sanderiana, or A. longiloba "watsoniana" (my informal label for the watsoniana-like variants of A. longiloba) x A. sanderiana? Who decides where watsoniana begins and ends, and so what hybrids belong in A. x amazonica and what don't?  Second, however the parentage is defined, the hybrid name would be applicable to ALL hybrids with that parentage: not just f1's, but f2's, f3,s and backcrosses etc etc etc. Third, there would arise the question of priority - depending how A. x amazonica was defined, there would likely be one or more Victorian-era hybrid binomial(s) already validated for it. Fourth, there is the problem of consistency: if botanical hybrid names are used for some cultivated Alocasias, how many more need to be created for those interspecific hybrids for which they do not yet exist? 

So let's not talk about Alocasia x amazonica :)

Alistair

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