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The contents of the Ornithochilus page were merged into Phalaenopsis on 27 November 2020. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
"Hemicr. or cham." on the species list - could this be explained, or removed! - MPF 7 July 2005 10:32 (UTC)
This terminology is to be found at World checklist of Monocotyledons - Kew JoJan 7 July 2005 13:25 (UTC)
Are the terms hemicryptophyte and chamaephyte at all appropriate for these tropical evergreen epiphytic orchids? The terms seem to refer to deciduous terrestrial plants of the temperate zone, and to distinguish where, relative to the "soil level," live buds persist after much of the plant has died back in winter. Jay L09 ( talk) 14:52, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
Hello! I took a lot of pictures from my home province in the Philippines. Many of the plants I could not name or classify. An example is here. I could not identify. but might very well me Phalaenopsis. There are more images in my user page. -- Ate Pinay ( talk• email) 15:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
@ Pinay06: I really think it is a Phalaenopsis amabilis. Conan Wolff ( talk) 13:40, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for this interesting article. I note "They bloom in their full glory for several weeks. If kept in the home, they usually last two to three months, which is considered quite a long time." Our white Phal has been in bloom, in the bathroom, since July 2006! === Vernon White (talk) 12:10, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Dear Sirs,
Subject: the Wikipedia entry in English of Phalaenopsis / Description
It is stated in the above entry that the word "Phalaenopsis" originates from Greek words "phalaina" and "opsis" as is certainly true. But the meaning and translation of the word "phalaina" into "moth" caught my eye. You can easily verify in any good dictionary that "phalaina" means "whale" in English and this is so both in ancient and modern Greek language. Could you perhaps explain what has led to your kind of interpretation of this word? Helsinki, Finland June 4, 2007
Mr. Antti Stenberg antti.stenberg@welho.com 82.181.115.37 06:00, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
Dear Sirs,
As to the semantics and translation of the greek word I refer to the dictionary of: A Lexicon Abridged from Liddel and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon Oxford at the Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press Impression of 1991 Printed in Great Britain
which is largely accepted as an authoritative source of the vocabulary of classical Greek. I refer to my extract from a.m. dictionary: page 750, column II: quote falaina, he, a whale, Lat. balaena: hence of a devouring monster. enquote (he = the greek eta, the definite article) quote fallaina, he, = falaina. enquote If needed, I can give ref/s to a modern Greek dictionary with a similar content of the same.
I dare to doubt the reliability of your a.m. reference and propose you consult a professional expert on Greek language. I myself am just a amateur of 30 years but have seen errors even in very goods dictionaries in etymologies and Greek words.
Yours sincerely Antti Stenberg
Phalaenoptilus also uses "phalaina" as in moth, as does Dendrobium phalaenopsis (in the latter case, the derivation isn't mentioned in the article; take my word for it.) These were named by Audobon and Lindley respectively, so we now have three botanists that think "phalaina" means "moth". I plugged "phalaina moth whale" into google, and came up with this rather unattractive page, which gives the following definition: "phalaina φαλαινα a whale; a moth". I don't think we have anything much to worry about here. Hesperian 00:41, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Dear Sirs:
As has been stated before, "Phalaenopsis" seems to have been used by Linnaeus to categorize moths, although the reason is not very clear. It is now, however, an obsolete category, though this does not matter to us much. What is interesting is that, when you look into the etymology of "Phalaena" from which "Phalaenopsis" is derived, and trace its roots through time and Indo-european languages, it would seem like the whale is the more correct sense of the word, although in a roundabout way. See the following link with its references:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%86%CE%AC%CE%BB%CE%B1%CE%B9%CE%BD%CE%B1#Ancient_Greek. Cite error: There are <ref>
tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
It would seem that a whale was named as it was in the Greek (and related/older languages) because of how it blows, how it shoots things out of itself. This word was originally related to the word used for how plants bloom. The whale blows water, the plants bloom their flowers. It is possible that Linnaeus named the moths as he did because of their appearance, or it could be that they were larger moths, and thus he called them "whale-ish moths", much like the term "whale" could be a derogatory reference to an overweight person in our own time and language. I have no intention of saying that this was definitively why he named the moths as he did, but the linguistic evidence supports that the meaning of the word indicates something sent out or shown forth from an origin, whether visible or not. And it is also supported by the aforementioned article that there was a metaphorical sense to the word, thus opening the possibility that Linnaeus used it metaphorically when he named the moths.
Thus we have some sense of the "Phalaena" piece of the word. The plant blossoms, thus manifesting its inner potential and beauty; and the whale blows, thus showing the contents that lay within it. It is also relevant that the suffix "-opsis", or rather the Greek word "opsis", is a word entirely caught up in the visual, i.e. something's appearance, especially as it was used in the theatre and plays, even in ancient times. See the following articles for references:
1)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-opsis Cite error: There are <ref>
tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
2)
/info/en/?search=Opsis Cite error: There are <ref>
tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
Opsis is a highly visual word, so to combine the two together as "Phalaenopsis" seems to indicate some thing that visually shows itself forth, like a plant developing blossoms and showing them to any who care to look. As for why this particular orchid species or plant species has been named this, I have nothing to add except the subjective. As well as the blossoms that come forth from the plant, the entire plant's structure seems to follow the pattern of "shooting out from an origin".
In the first place, the center or core of the plant grows vertically. From this one core, the leaves shoot out radially, the roots shoot out likewise from this core radially, although they are more varied in shape and direction. The stem too shoots from the core, into its preferred direction. Thus the plant seems to exemplify the sense of the word "Phalaenopsis": this one plant has roots, leaves, and stem/flowers that shoot forth from the core, and the core shoots forth from itself along its axis.
2605:A601:A81A:4000:D92B:BE31:11D4:831A ( talk) 03:56, 9 October 2019 (UTC)Linguist Pat
From the article: "Post-pollination changes in Phalaenopsis orchids - Phalaenopsis are not only outstanding in their beauty, but also unique in their photosynthetic mechanism. " This must be a mistake; it is not explained anyway - at least not very clearly. 82.92.245.109 ( talk) 16:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
The following paragraph seems terribly contradictory. I have removed it from section "Intergeneric hybrids" and placed it here, if anyone wants to try to salvage the concept that true representatives of the nothogenus Phalphalaenopsis somehow do not exist:
I have also added Phalphalaenopsis to the list of nothogenera. Jay L09 ( talk) 05:19, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Note in the Wikipedia article for Cultivar:
"The cultivar epithet is capitalised and enclosed by single quotes; it should not be italicized."
Many of the images in this article not only ignore this rule, but seem to have little regard for context. Is Phalaenopsis cultivars a species? Example "Pink Phalaenopsis (Moth) Orchids" doesn't italicize the genus name, feels the need to have "(Moth)" where it isn't needed, and mistakes the number of plants in the picture.
An otherwise credible article looks positively shoddy when the attached images appear to follow a schizophrenic author's stream of consciousness. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spontaneous Symmetry ( talk • contribs) 15:34, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
An image used in this article, File:Phal hybrid1.jpg, has been nominated for speedy deletion for the following reason: All Wikipedia files with unknown copyright status
Don't panic; you should have time to contest the deletion (although please review deletion guidelines before doing so). The best way to contest this form of deletion is by posting on the image talk page.
This notification is provided by a Bot -- CommonsNotificationBot ( talk) 21:32, 1 January 2012 (UTC) |
The article presents two views about the conditions required for flowering. I've put the sentences these two views into the same paragraph, for neatness, but I think it wouldn't harm the article to just present the summary of the Blancard + Runkle paper -- something like:
"Phalaenopsis will produce the greatest number of flowers with an average daily temperature of between 15C and 18C. Temperatures above 28C will inhibit flowering completely. It was previously believed that a night-time temperature drop was necessary for flowering, but this is not the case". AndrewBolt ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 09:39, 27 February 2012 (UTC).
There is no section on how these plants are pollinated... 75.84.172.85 ( talk) 23:51, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing that out. I added such a section. Conan Wolff ( talk) 14:03, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
In the opening paragraph is the phrase:
"Phalaenopsis is one of the most popular orchids in the trade"
What is "the trade" to which the contributor refers, and what has a "trade" to do with the summary definition of a species of orchid in an encyclopaedia? If this web site were for "traders in botanical specimens" the context would make some sense, but this is an article about plants, not about trading.
Or are we to assume that because Wikipedia is USian in origin and style all the information it contains must be seen within the context of buying, selling, money, a capitalist outlook on life, etc? Who was the person who so wisely and wittily said: "Americans [sic] know the price of everything and the value of nothing"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.130.99.241 ( talk) 05:17, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Is it just me or does the ecology section have absolutely nothing to do with the ecology of these plants? If anything, it is plant physiology and feels very detached from the rest of the text. I suggest the section either be completely removed or moved to some other section of the article.
Unless someone complains, I will remove the section.
MrKimm Master of ecology 2014-08-22
@ MrKimm: I also thought that section was odd. Maybe it should just be renamed to phytochemistry instead of removing it. I added a bit to the pollination. That could be the ecology section. Conan Wolff ( talk) 14:05, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
I suggest the images shown in the article should be more representative for the genus. In other words instead of including several images of complex hybrids, which are primarily composed of subgenus Phalaenopsis, the images could be chosen to represent the other subgenera (Proboscidioides, Aphyllae, Polychilos, Parishianae). Conan Wolff ( talk) 20:27, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
I came to this article to learn if my orchid is an annual or a perennial, but this information was not available. Could this be fixed, please? Thank you! 98.97.34.38 ( talk) 19:01, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
How do you take care of it 2601:18D:8C7F:B600:9425:6B2:6F71:FF9F ( talk) 13:26, 14 May 2023 (UTC)
This is the
talk page for discussing improvements to the
Phalaenopsis article. This is not a forum for general discussion of the article's subject. |
Article policies
|
Find sources: Google ( books · news · scholar · free images · WP refs) · FENS · JSTOR · TWL |
This article is rated B-class on Wikipedia's
content assessment scale. It is of interest to the following WikiProjects: | |||||||||||||||||||||
|
Daily pageviews of this article
A graph should have been displayed here but
graphs are temporarily disabled. Until they are enabled again, visit the interactive graph at
pageviews.wmcloud.org |
The contents of the Ornithochilus page were merged into Phalaenopsis on 27 November 2020. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected page, please see its history; for the discussion at that location, see its talk page. |
"Hemicr. or cham." on the species list - could this be explained, or removed! - MPF 7 July 2005 10:32 (UTC)
This terminology is to be found at World checklist of Monocotyledons - Kew JoJan 7 July 2005 13:25 (UTC)
Are the terms hemicryptophyte and chamaephyte at all appropriate for these tropical evergreen epiphytic orchids? The terms seem to refer to deciduous terrestrial plants of the temperate zone, and to distinguish where, relative to the "soil level," live buds persist after much of the plant has died back in winter. Jay L09 ( talk) 14:52, 19 February 2009 (UTC)
Hello! I took a lot of pictures from my home province in the Philippines. Many of the plants I could not name or classify. An example is here. I could not identify. but might very well me Phalaenopsis. There are more images in my user page. -- Ate Pinay ( talk• email) 15:54, 22 January 2007 (UTC)
@ Pinay06: I really think it is a Phalaenopsis amabilis. Conan Wolff ( talk) 13:40, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
Thanks for this interesting article. I note "They bloom in their full glory for several weeks. If kept in the home, they usually last two to three months, which is considered quite a long time." Our white Phal has been in bloom, in the bathroom, since July 2006! === Vernon White (talk) 12:10, 14 May 2007 (UTC)
Dear Sirs,
Subject: the Wikipedia entry in English of Phalaenopsis / Description
It is stated in the above entry that the word "Phalaenopsis" originates from Greek words "phalaina" and "opsis" as is certainly true. But the meaning and translation of the word "phalaina" into "moth" caught my eye. You can easily verify in any good dictionary that "phalaina" means "whale" in English and this is so both in ancient and modern Greek language. Could you perhaps explain what has led to your kind of interpretation of this word? Helsinki, Finland June 4, 2007
Mr. Antti Stenberg antti.stenberg@welho.com 82.181.115.37 06:00, 4 June 2007 (UTC)
Dear Sirs,
As to the semantics and translation of the greek word I refer to the dictionary of: A Lexicon Abridged from Liddel and Scott's Greek-English Lexicon Oxford at the Clarendon Press/Oxford University Press Impression of 1991 Printed in Great Britain
which is largely accepted as an authoritative source of the vocabulary of classical Greek. I refer to my extract from a.m. dictionary: page 750, column II: quote falaina, he, a whale, Lat. balaena: hence of a devouring monster. enquote (he = the greek eta, the definite article) quote fallaina, he, = falaina. enquote If needed, I can give ref/s to a modern Greek dictionary with a similar content of the same.
I dare to doubt the reliability of your a.m. reference and propose you consult a professional expert on Greek language. I myself am just a amateur of 30 years but have seen errors even in very goods dictionaries in etymologies and Greek words.
Yours sincerely Antti Stenberg
Phalaenoptilus also uses "phalaina" as in moth, as does Dendrobium phalaenopsis (in the latter case, the derivation isn't mentioned in the article; take my word for it.) These were named by Audobon and Lindley respectively, so we now have three botanists that think "phalaina" means "moth". I plugged "phalaina moth whale" into google, and came up with this rather unattractive page, which gives the following definition: "phalaina φαλαινα a whale; a moth". I don't think we have anything much to worry about here. Hesperian 00:41, 6 June 2007 (UTC)
Dear Sirs:
As has been stated before, "Phalaenopsis" seems to have been used by Linnaeus to categorize moths, although the reason is not very clear. It is now, however, an obsolete category, though this does not matter to us much. What is interesting is that, when you look into the etymology of "Phalaena" from which "Phalaenopsis" is derived, and trace its roots through time and Indo-european languages, it would seem like the whale is the more correct sense of the word, although in a roundabout way. See the following link with its references:
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CF%86%CE%AC%CE%BB%CE%B1%CE%B9%CE%BD%CE%B1#Ancient_Greek. Cite error: There are <ref>
tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
It would seem that a whale was named as it was in the Greek (and related/older languages) because of how it blows, how it shoots things out of itself. This word was originally related to the word used for how plants bloom. The whale blows water, the plants bloom their flowers. It is possible that Linnaeus named the moths as he did because of their appearance, or it could be that they were larger moths, and thus he called them "whale-ish moths", much like the term "whale" could be a derogatory reference to an overweight person in our own time and language. I have no intention of saying that this was definitively why he named the moths as he did, but the linguistic evidence supports that the meaning of the word indicates something sent out or shown forth from an origin, whether visible or not. And it is also supported by the aforementioned article that there was a metaphorical sense to the word, thus opening the possibility that Linnaeus used it metaphorically when he named the moths.
Thus we have some sense of the "Phalaena" piece of the word. The plant blossoms, thus manifesting its inner potential and beauty; and the whale blows, thus showing the contents that lay within it. It is also relevant that the suffix "-opsis", or rather the Greek word "opsis", is a word entirely caught up in the visual, i.e. something's appearance, especially as it was used in the theatre and plays, even in ancient times. See the following articles for references:
1)
https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/-opsis Cite error: There are <ref>
tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
2)
/info/en/?search=Opsis Cite error: There are <ref>
tags on this page without content in them (see the
help page).
Opsis is a highly visual word, so to combine the two together as "Phalaenopsis" seems to indicate some thing that visually shows itself forth, like a plant developing blossoms and showing them to any who care to look. As for why this particular orchid species or plant species has been named this, I have nothing to add except the subjective. As well as the blossoms that come forth from the plant, the entire plant's structure seems to follow the pattern of "shooting out from an origin".
In the first place, the center or core of the plant grows vertically. From this one core, the leaves shoot out radially, the roots shoot out likewise from this core radially, although they are more varied in shape and direction. The stem too shoots from the core, into its preferred direction. Thus the plant seems to exemplify the sense of the word "Phalaenopsis": this one plant has roots, leaves, and stem/flowers that shoot forth from the core, and the core shoots forth from itself along its axis.
2605:A601:A81A:4000:D92B:BE31:11D4:831A ( talk) 03:56, 9 October 2019 (UTC)Linguist Pat
From the article: "Post-pollination changes in Phalaenopsis orchids - Phalaenopsis are not only outstanding in their beauty, but also unique in their photosynthetic mechanism. " This must be a mistake; it is not explained anyway - at least not very clearly. 82.92.245.109 ( talk) 16:04, 13 April 2008 (UTC)
The following paragraph seems terribly contradictory. I have removed it from section "Intergeneric hybrids" and placed it here, if anyone wants to try to salvage the concept that true representatives of the nothogenus Phalphalaenopsis somehow do not exist:
I have also added Phalphalaenopsis to the list of nothogenera. Jay L09 ( talk) 05:19, 20 October 2009 (UTC)
Note in the Wikipedia article for Cultivar:
"The cultivar epithet is capitalised and enclosed by single quotes; it should not be italicized."
Many of the images in this article not only ignore this rule, but seem to have little regard for context. Is Phalaenopsis cultivars a species? Example "Pink Phalaenopsis (Moth) Orchids" doesn't italicize the genus name, feels the need to have "(Moth)" where it isn't needed, and mistakes the number of plants in the picture.
An otherwise credible article looks positively shoddy when the attached images appear to follow a schizophrenic author's stream of consciousness. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Spontaneous Symmetry ( talk • contribs) 15:34, 19 July 2011 (UTC)
An image used in this article, File:Phal hybrid1.jpg, has been nominated for speedy deletion for the following reason: All Wikipedia files with unknown copyright status
Don't panic; you should have time to contest the deletion (although please review deletion guidelines before doing so). The best way to contest this form of deletion is by posting on the image talk page.
This notification is provided by a Bot -- CommonsNotificationBot ( talk) 21:32, 1 January 2012 (UTC) |
The article presents two views about the conditions required for flowering. I've put the sentences these two views into the same paragraph, for neatness, but I think it wouldn't harm the article to just present the summary of the Blancard + Runkle paper -- something like:
"Phalaenopsis will produce the greatest number of flowers with an average daily temperature of between 15C and 18C. Temperatures above 28C will inhibit flowering completely. It was previously believed that a night-time temperature drop was necessary for flowering, but this is not the case". AndrewBolt ( talk) —Preceding undated comment added 09:39, 27 February 2012 (UTC).
There is no section on how these plants are pollinated... 75.84.172.85 ( talk) 23:51, 1 April 2014 (UTC)
Thanks for pointing that out. I added such a section. Conan Wolff ( talk) 14:03, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
In the opening paragraph is the phrase:
"Phalaenopsis is one of the most popular orchids in the trade"
What is "the trade" to which the contributor refers, and what has a "trade" to do with the summary definition of a species of orchid in an encyclopaedia? If this web site were for "traders in botanical specimens" the context would make some sense, but this is an article about plants, not about trading.
Or are we to assume that because Wikipedia is USian in origin and style all the information it contains must be seen within the context of buying, selling, money, a capitalist outlook on life, etc? Who was the person who so wisely and wittily said: "Americans [sic] know the price of everything and the value of nothing"? — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.130.99.241 ( talk) 05:17, 5 August 2014 (UTC)
Is it just me or does the ecology section have absolutely nothing to do with the ecology of these plants? If anything, it is plant physiology and feels very detached from the rest of the text. I suggest the section either be completely removed or moved to some other section of the article.
Unless someone complains, I will remove the section.
MrKimm Master of ecology 2014-08-22
@ MrKimm: I also thought that section was odd. Maybe it should just be renamed to phytochemistry instead of removing it. I added a bit to the pollination. That could be the ecology section. Conan Wolff ( talk) 14:05, 25 February 2022 (UTC)
I suggest the images shown in the article should be more representative for the genus. In other words instead of including several images of complex hybrids, which are primarily composed of subgenus Phalaenopsis, the images could be chosen to represent the other subgenera (Proboscidioides, Aphyllae, Polychilos, Parishianae). Conan Wolff ( talk) 20:27, 3 March 2022 (UTC)
I came to this article to learn if my orchid is an annual or a perennial, but this information was not available. Could this be fixed, please? Thank you! 98.97.34.38 ( talk) 19:01, 24 April 2023 (UTC)
How do you take care of it 2601:18D:8C7F:B600:9425:6B2:6F71:FF9F ( talk) 13:26, 14 May 2023 (UTC)