Susan Erickson wrote:
We are looking at Dendrobium books in light of all the new changes to
the group, I want some recommendations.

Do you think the changes will take?
Who is the best author?

These are the two new books on the market -
Dendrobium and it's Relatives by Bill Lavarack, Wayne Harris -
paperback and not released until 8/15/06.

The Dendrobiums by Howard P. Wood - hardback
released 7/15/06.

Is there a different book I should be looking at for current
information? These are the two that Amazon lists as current.
We do have the Baker book, but it is from 1996.

Thanks for the advise.
SuE
http://orchids.legolas.org/gallery/main.php


I don't know of any current books that cover the recent changes to
Dendrobium. Lavarack et al's book is well worth having but doesn't
cover the name changes, which are still up in the taxonomical air as
far as acceptance is concerned. David Jones is due to release "A
Complete Guide to Native Orchids of Australia" later this year, which
is to include the new name changes for the Australian species. Other
than that, I think you'll have to wait until the dust settles before
the new names start appearing in books.

As far as whether or not the names will take, realistically, I wouldn't
be judging a Dendrobium book based on correct taxonomy just yet. It
will take a while for old names to fall out of favour. Dockrillia for
example is firmly established in Australia but there are plenty of
people outside Australia who still label their teretes as Dendrobium. A
lot of the orchid growing community appear unnecessarily recalcitrant
about accepting the new names so I doubt any book referring to the
larger genus as Dendrobium will be considered outdated to the
horticulturalist in the near future.

Andrew