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A few people have approached me in regards to how to enter grex vs. clonal names on DG when entering a new orchid entry. Due to techincal difficulties, it is not feasible to enter a grex box. So how should one enter an orchid if it is not a species? After much playing around I have come up with a pseudo-solution. Here is how the fields may be entered so that an orchid can be searched based on grex and clone and entered in such a manner that it looks proper according to orchid nomenclature.
For the following example I will use Odontocidium Jungle Monarch 'Everglades'. For those not familiar with grex vs. clone, in the example, Jungle Monarch is the GREX name while 'Everglades' is the CLONAL name. Here is how this orchid could be entered:
Common name: enter the genus AND GREX name, so in this case, I would enter Odontocidium Jungle Monarch
Family: enter Orchidaceae
Genus: enter Odontocidium
Species: leave blank
Cultivar: enter Everglades
If you look at this entry it will appear at the top of the page as Detailed information on Odontocidium Jungle Monarch 'Everglades'...exactly as it SHOULD appear when referring to this plant.
OK, what about a search for a specific orchid?
In the 'Searching the Plantfiles' page, if you know the GREX name of an orchid, enter it in the Common name field. If you know the CLONAL name, enter it in the Cultivar field. Don't enter anything in the species field (of course this only applies to hybrid orchids).
So, if I wanted to see if Odontocidium Jungle Monarch 'Everglades' was already entered, I would go to the 'Searching the Plantfiles' page, then enter Jungle Monarch in the common name field. If you do that, you will indeed get the entry, even if you don't enter the genus Odontocidium. Conversely, if you knew the clonal name, enter Everglades in the cultivar field and again, you will get the proper entry.
Hopefully this is understandable.
One other situation you may encounter: let's say that a given orchid grex has several clones eg. Odontocidium (aka Colmanara) Wildcat...there are several named clones of this hybrid, including 'Bobcat', 'Ocelot', 'Yellow Butterfly', 'Whitelip', etc. If you wanted to see ALL the clones you would use the search page and enter Wildcat in the common name field, then DG would generate all the clones of that hybrid. If you wanted information on a specific clone, then enter the clone name in the cultivar field.
Having said all this, these suggestions will only work if an orchid is entered in the fashion I outlined. Those previously entered into the Plantfiles may not work in the search engine if not entered in the way I explained. I am not in a position to make changes to the PlantFiles. If YOU already entered an orchid in the PlantFiles, then you can go back and edit the entry, making the changes I suggest, then all can work reasonably well in regards to the proper nameing of grex, clones and searching for them.
One last comment: if your orchid is simply a cross, eg. Phalaenopsis Bamboo Baby X Cashmore, then you probably should NOT enter it in the PlantFiles at all (I have done this myself so the damage is done now!). It will be very difficult to do a search of just a cross and that same cross may result in extremely variable offspring, so an associated picture may not give you an accurate representation of that plant.
Sorry for the long-winded comments. Please feel free to make your comments and suggestions.
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