************************************************************ Orchids on the Internet -- Part Two *************************** by Dennis Moser What do you get when you cross ...? What would orchid history be without the amazing range of hybrids that have been created? Not to deny the richness of the variety of species, but for many orchid growers, hybrids represent the only way to enjoy these plants. But the sheer complexity of hybrid lineage can seem daunting. INTRA-generic crosses (crosses within a genus) are easy enough, but things can get confusing (creative?) when encountering INTER-generic crosses (crosses between two or more genuses). Fortunately there are resources available for unraveling the mysteries of Beallaras, Stanfieldaras, Kircharas, and Howearas. For growers with World Wide Web access, in fact, there is a solution at hand. By way of review, the World Wide Web can be considered as that part of the Internet that utilizes a piece of software called a "browser" for viewing the information being presented. This is in contrast to other parts of the Internet which use, for example, only text for presenting information. While it may seem as if EVERYTHING is out there for those encountering the Web for the first time, the Web still represents a lesser fraction of the Internet, albeit certainly the more visually exciting and rapidly expanding part. Resources on the Web are arranged into "sites" consisting of "pages." These descriptions cannot be taken too literally, as a given single page may be many computer screens long and a web site may consist of one discrete page or thousands. The "address" for a site is called a "URL," short for "Uniform Resource Locator," and takes the form of "http://somekindoftexthere.andhere" such as "http://angrek.com", which is the Web site that sponsors the Ann Arbor Society"s Web pages. Punctuation IS important, nay, CRITICAL and so are backslashes and capitalization. Type carefully. Finding these URLs is not always easy and many people have spent considerable time and effort in building web sites that are compendia of URLs thematically collected and arranged to simplify finding other sites. The orchid growing world has not been left out by this categorical imperative and there are a number of excellent "compendium" sites just for orchid growers. One such site, The Orchid Mall (http://www.orchidmall.com/), is maintained by Carson Whitlow in Iowa. He has compiled and organized lists of URLS into categories such as growers, supplies, grower's organizations, and publications. Within each of these categories are links to the individual Web sites. Of course our own organization's Web site is listed (http://angrek.com/AAOS), along with hundreds of other orchid societies. But back to our problem at hand: suppose we encounter an orchid named as an "Alexanderara" or, worse still, in its cryptic abbreviated form of "Alxra?" Unless you know this already, it would be hard to see that this is an intergeneric cross of four genuses, Brassia x Cochlioda x Odontoglossum x Oncidium. Well, the Web solution makes this pretty painless to unravel. On the Orchid Mall, there is a category called "Of Special Interest." Located on that page is a link for a site called "Linda's Orchid Page"(the URL for this is http://www.lgcy.com/orchids/). Linda Fortner's page is one of the longish, multiple-screen pages that you must scroll down to see in its entirety, but is well worth the effort. She has a sense of humor and quite a passion for growing orchids. (I mention her humor because, as I go back and touch up this article on Halloween morning, I am looking at her page...it has a distinctly Halloween look, even featuring an orchid story for Halloween!) About midway down her page, there is a table of contents entitled "What you will find here" and there is an entry called "Orchid Hybrid Abbreviations." Selecting this link takes you to her extensive chart of orchid hybrid names (http://www.lgcy.com/orchids/hybrid.html). One can browse through the tables' listings or choose an alphabetic entry and see what plants have been used to create the hybrid you are seeking. Once you have found it, there are often links to pages with entries about the parent plants themselves. Many of these entries have photographs of the plants as well. Selecting the links on the parent plant description pages takes the user to more extensive illustrated descriptive pages in an online version of the TIME-LIFE Plant Encyclopedia. While not necessarily a definitive resource, the encyclopedia certainly helps provide some useful information and guidelines about the parent plants of the hybrid one has been researching. Now about those hybrids: Beallara = Brassia x Cochlioda x Miltonia x Odontoglossum Stanfieldara = Epidendrum x Laelia x Sophronitis Kirchara = Cattleya x Epidendrum x Laelia x Sophronitis Howeara = Leochilus x Oncidium x Rodriguezia ....but I'm leaving it to you to discover the abbreviations! (Well, maybe next month!) ************************************************************