Mine is also in bloom and has the best flowering ever, but to achieve that we have had a summer which broke heat and humidity records. Wimpy by NT Standards.

Had the plant for about 30 years after it was given to my son by Jim Cootes. Thanks Jim.

The best place to look up species names is the RHS Checklist. The University of Google is handy but unreliable.

RHS Checklist

Just enter Dendrobium and see what comes up.

Thanks Arthur. I got mine from friends who had them on a tree, low down where it got hit by the sprinklers. The canes were bunched together and really long. Mine however, are smaller and more spindly. On the names business, have the taxonomists been getting stuck into Dendrobiums again?

Lovely

Vappodes bigibba indeed. Just shows how unreliable the University of Google is.

The official recording place for orchid names is the RHS in England. My understanding is that if you are a Scientist and you discover something such as why the Genera names of some orchids should be changed from Dendrobium to Vappodes, you publish the facts usually in the form of a paper. This paper is then peer reviewed by other scientists and may or may not be accepted.

This is all very vague, but as far as I am concerned the two places to check on names are the orchid hybrid register and the checklist of selected plants.

http://apps.rhs.org.uk/horticulturaldatabase/orchidregister/orchidregister.asp

http://apps.kew.org/wcsp/qsearch.do Bring this link up and enter Vappodes and see what you find.

Thanks again Arthur. I'm familiar with the workings of the system. Often I go on the Tropical Rainforest List because it also has descriptions, photos and distribution details. However, they don't update name changes all that frequently. I was in touch with Kew a few years back and they said "The Checklist" wasn't regularly updated but that "The Plantlist" was updated daily as new information arrives. It started me often IDing plants as "so far today it's Such-and-such species". But when it comes to orchid cultivars and hybrids I just get lost in all the language and jargon, LOL.