Much obliged gentelmen for your input on this one. I will accept
"odoratum".

I now have another conudrum:

Back in June I e-mailed the RHS regarding the spelling of Vanda coerulea and
Vanda coerulescens in their monocot database
http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/monocotChecklist/default.jsp

I wrote: "You might want to check the spelling of Vanda coerulea and Vanda
coerulescens. These are spelt "caerulea" and "caerulescens" respectively in
the data base." I had never seen them spelt this way.

The reply I got was:

"Blue is spelled caerulea not with an "o" as people used to do."

Implying that Kew were correct.

I have again checked the data base and they are now spelt Vanda coerulea and
Vanda caerulescens.

Why has one reverted back to "o" and not the other if blue is spelt with
an"a"? It would seem that I was right on at least one!

Cheers

John

" There is a problem with the name Aerides. According to the suffix -es
it
belongs to what is called the third declination of nouns in Latin. And
ther are (as far as I know) no rules that say which words are male and
wich are female. You would have to look them up in a dictionary (or as an
ancient Roman, you would have known it by intuition?). And here is the
problem: The ancient Romans didn't know the Aerides. So in classical
Latin
dictionaries you won't find the gender of this genus. If male it would be
odoratum, if female it would be odorata.

I have taken a look at what the RHS does and they spell odoratum. Jays
orchid species encyclopedia on the other hand says odorata (and has
odoratum as synonym)

So ?????
Aerides is Greek
Odoratum isLatin
It is a no-no for linguists to mix two languages
but Taxonomists can't be experts in everything.
Yet it causes difficulties.
That is why someone opted for the neuter: odoratum.
Ed Cormier