Habenaria radiata 2009

Little Habenaria radiata surprised me this year. In the past the plants I've seen and grown have had only one or two flowers, at most three, per stem. One of the plants here this year produced a stem with six flowers; another produced a stem with four. And they seem to be setting seed this year.

What should we be calling this plant? It's been placed in the genera Habenaria, Platanthera and Pecteilis. Each of those names still seems to be in use for other orchids, and that suggests that there is someone out there who considers them to be good genera.

One of my email correspondents says he has hybridized Habenaria radiata and Platanthera blephariglottis. I hope some idiot does not announce this as a "bi-generic hybrid" instead of doing the more reasonable thing - acknowledging that two plants which hybridize to produce viable offspring do not belong in different genera. In fact, some might say that in spite of whatever morphological differences exist between them, the ability to "hybridize" and produce viable offspring is a good sign that they are in fact the same species.

Habenaria radiata

The winsome little bloom shown above is the Egret Flower, a tiny Japanese and Korean bog orchid named Habenaria radiata or Pecteilis radiata. It's very easily grown: the one shown grows in a pot of sandy peat kept moist in full sun. The plant grows from a corm about the size of a sweet pea seed. This plant is winter hardy here and can be grown in bog gardens, but it is so tiny that it is apt to be overwhelmed by neighboring plants.

Among gardeners it is widely known as Pecteilis radiata. This name Pecteilis was coined by one of the really colorful characters in the history of early nineteenth century taxomomy, Constantin Samuel Rafinesque-Schmaltz. He was born into an Italian family near Istanbul in 1783 and died an American citizen in 1840 in Philadelphia. He spent years in Kentucky. Rafinesque evidently didn't hesitate to name anything which came his way: those were the days when taxonomists shot from the hip, and Rafinesque shot plants, animals, whatever fell into his hands.