Orchid’s Names
To the beginning orchid grower, the caring for the plants is of greatest importance. After a while, most people realize that our beloved orchids are just plants. Most of us have dealt with regular plants before: from the stately firs and friendly apple trees to the lowly dandelion and crab-grass. Their names are familiar and are not considered to be tongue twisters.
On the other hand, most orchids do not come with popular (in our case, English) names – we only know them by their scientific names. These happen to be in classic Greek, sometimes Latin or other languages and that is where starts the tongue-twisting and the trouble with getting these names right.
Oh yes, we do call them “Lady-Slippers” and “Pansy Orchids” or “Dancing Ladies” and so on, but the majority of even our most popular orchids have only their binominal Latin names as starters; attached to these are other names in many modern languages and I will not go into these. I just want to make it a little clearer why some of these unusual names exist. There are a number of books and articles which deal with this same subject. Here are just a few to whet your appetites so you can look for others and get the meaning of these funny words.
There are, of course, a good many orchid names that are names of persons, for instance:
Brassia – after William Brass, a collector who worked for Sir Josef Banks
Cattleya - after William Cattley who flowered the first C. labiata in England
Masdevallia – after Dr. Jose Masdeval, a Spanish physician
Miltonia – after the Earl Fitzwilliam, Viscount Milton
Other words try to be descriptive of the flower (or plant). The majority of these orchid names come from Greek words; as a matter of fact, the very word “Orchis” is the Greek word for testicle, interpreting the shape of the orchis root.
Coelogyne comes from the two words: koilos (hollow) and gyne (female), indicating a deeply set stigma.
Coryanthes is the combination of korys (helmet) and anthos (flower).
Cymbidium refers to the kymbes (boat-like shape) of the lip.
Dendrobium comes from dendron (tree) and bios (life), indicating the fact that the plants live on trees.
Encyclia comes from enkyklein (to encircle), describing the way the side-lobes of the lip grow around the column.
Epidendrum has a similar meaning as Dendrobium; epi (upon) and dendron (tree).
Oncidium tells us that there is a noticeable swelling or wart (onkos) on the lip.
Paphiopedilum and Cypripedium are both genera of the Lady’s or Venus’ Slipper group.
Paphos is a city on Crete and had a famous temple dedicated to Venus, and the whole island of Cyprus was also dedicated to this goddess; pedilum translates into ‘slipper’.
Phalaenopsis is from phalaina (moth) and opsis (appearance), describing the fact that the first collector of this genus saw a group of these flowers at a distance and thought they were a group of moths hovering over some plant.
Psychopsis is from psyche (butterfly) and opsis (appearance) = looks like a butterfly.
Angraecum come from the Malaysian word angurek, meaning epiphytic plant
Bifrenaria comes from the Latin bi- (two) and frenum (strap), referring to the two strap- like structures that join the pollinia to the viscidium; this is what makes a Bifrenaria different from a Maxillaria.
Vanda is a borrowed Sanskrit name.
Ingrid Schmidt-Ostrander - Canadian Orchid Congress