In 2013, a rare and beautiful variety of orchid appeared in cultivation under the commercial trade name ‘Big Pink.’ Now, research by Dutch and Australian biologists has established that it is indeed a new species of the wild orchid genus Dendrochilum.
Dendrochilum hampelii. Image credit: Lubbert Westra / Sulistyo B et al.
While studying a cultivated plant might be quite a motivator and serve as a starting point for scientific quests, the assumptions that one has found a new species at the florist’s could easily be wrong.
Not only is the place of origin, written on the label, often doubtful, but there is always the chance of accidentally describing a man-made hybrid as a new species.
Such could have been the case of Bobby Sulistyo from Leiden University and the University of Applied Sciences Arnhem and Nijmegen and his colleagues from the Netherlands and Australia when they discovered that although previously assumed impossible, the relatives of an orchid variety called Big Pink, they were surveying, could also make human-assisted hybrids.
Moreover, both of the specimens they have had at hand had come from uncertain place of origin.
However, the scientists conducted a series of DNA analyses to conclude that firstly, Big Pink is a previously unknown species of the wild orchid genus Dendrochilum and then, that there is no evidence for it being an artificial hybrid.
“We formally describe Big Pink as a new species under the name Dendrochilum hampelii,” Sulistyo and co-authors wrote in a paper published in the journal PhytoKeys.
“Morphologically, it is most similar to Dendrochilum propinquum, but it differs in a number of characters.”
Eventually, Dendrochilum hampelii was found in the wild as well.
“Of the two cultivated individuals available for our study, one was of unrecorded provenance. The other allegedly originated from the Philippines,” the scientists wrote.
“Observations of the species occurring in the wild in the Philippines in the northern provinces of Bukidnon and Misamis Oriental on the island of Mindanao confirmed this.”
In the wild, Big Pink grows as an epiphyte at elevations approximately 1,200 m above sea level among mosses on the trunks and branches of trees. Fresh flowers of plants observed in the wild were pale yellow whereas fresh flowers of the cultivated plants studied were pinkish salmon-colored.
So far, little is known about the distribution of Dendrochilum hampelii in nature, so Sulistyo and co-authors suggest its conservation status to be considered as Data Deficient according to the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.
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Sulistyo B et al. 2015. Dendrochilum hampelii (Coelogyninae, Epidendroideae, Orchidaceae) traded as ‘Big Pink’ is a new species, not a hybrid: evidence from nrITS, matK and ycf1 sequence data. PhytoKeys 56: 83-97; doi: 10.3897/phytokeys.56.5432
