zuzu said:Lin, the CoL never includes the x, but we do. Scroll down on this page and you'll see that it says "hybrid taxon." A hybrid taxon has the "x" included in our database.
http://www.catalogueoflife.org...
If that is the case, it is an error. An "x" preceding a lower-case name of a hybrid indicates a grex and not one unique hybrid. A grex is the product of a specific cross. It can be a specific cross that occurred once or that was repeated and includes all the plants produced by the cross regardless of their appearance, which can be extremely different.
For example, since several siblings of LariAnn Garner's Alocasia x portora survived and at least two are in circulation now, they are correctly referred to as members of a grex. However, her cross of Alocasia odora with Alocasia gageana consists now of only one plant that was selected from the products of that cross and was released as a single cultivar. Such unique cultivars are shown upper case and in single quotes (inverted commas) after the genus: Alocasia 'Calidora.'
This is consistent with the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants.
