Pleione bilamellata

[arisaema]

This species from Hailuogou was published with what I assume is an invalid name last autumn, does anyone know if it has been corrected?

[Maren]

Hello,
this is very interesting. Would you be able to scan the rest of the article please so that I can translate it and take it to Cribb/Butterfield?

[arisaema]

Sure, the rest is below Yijia has posted pictures of it in situ here and here, and I've posted pictures of it here.

[karel_t]

Pleione bilamellata (Lindl.) Kuntze is a synonym of Coelogyne bilamellata Lindl.
I've personally never heard about this new species.
K.

[arisaema]

Pleione bilamellata (Lindl.) Kuntze is a synonym of Coelogyne bilamellata Lindl.

Yes, I know it was published with a nomen invalidum, so I was wondering if any corrections had been made? I'm not sure what the Code says?

It's a reasonably interesting species, mostly because it should be both bone hardy (-20C) and extremely tolerant of winter moisture, Hailuogou is wet all year round.

[Maren]

Thanks for the article. I have printed it and will take it to get some feedback.

[Paul Cumbleton]

I saw this publication a few weeks ago. To me, from the photos, it looks just like yet another form of P. pleionoides (or bulbocodioides/limprichtii). I really would not accept that it deserves a new species status unless there is a compelling reason to do so. Does the translation of the text suggest any such reason?

Paul

[arisaema]

They mention this species only having two lamellae, versus four in P. limprichtii (is that correct?) and a distinctive, flattened pseudobulb. (Which is true, it really does look quite different from that of the ordinary P. limprichtii in cultivation.)

Hailuogou is just south-east of Kangding where the type of P. limprichtii was found, although for some strange reason the authors of this paper claim the latter has a southern distribution from S Sichuan and W Yunnan into N Burma?

ETA: The pseudobulbs of the "bilamellata" are also distinctly different from the Pleione species I found 500m down the valley (3200m vs. 2700m), presumably P. bulbocodioides.

[Paul Cumbleton]

Hi Arisaema,
Have you actually seen live material of P. bilamellata? - you write as if you have. Looking just at the pictures in the paper, the bulbs do not look "flattened" to me. The right hand one in particular looks tall and pointed. They look no different to many of the bulbs of P. pleionoides I have seen. While P. limprichtii does have 4 lamellae, P. pleionoides can have either two or four. I can still see nothing about this plant which makes it any different to P. pleionoides which we know to be very variable across its wide range. Perhaps this just shows I am a "lumper" when it comes to taxonomy, rather than the "splitters" who seem to want to give a new name to every minor variation. (This is why I do not accept the names P. voltolinii or P. hubeiensis either which to me are also just variations on the theme of P. pleionoides).

Paul

[arisaema]

I've seen hundreds of them, although only in leaf, pictures below. According to the caption in the paper the right hand picture shows P. limprichtii, while the left hand one shows the (supposedly) new species. The pseudobulbs of P. bilamellae look like miniature P. formosana, like a slightly flattened ball.