The story of the orchid Flickingeria praetermissa

Back in 2006, I was given a digital copy of Philippine orchid types kept at the Oakes Ames herbarium in Harvard by slain botanist Leonardo L. Co and trying to match Philippine orchid checklists at that time, I noticed that there was a sheet named Dendrobium forcipatum, an unpublished name attributed to Oakes Ames. Further investigation revealed that Ames gave the name Dendrobium forcipatum to the specimens collected by C.A. Wenzel (Wenzel 65) in Dagami, Puguahaan, Leyte in May 17, 1913 but apparently did not publish a description paper; there is not even a record of the name in Index Kewensis nor at the International Plant Names Index. Later in 1920, J.J. Smith described a plant that was in cultivation in Bogor, Java, Indonesia, but of unknown provenance and named it as Dendrobium forcipatum J.J. Smith, which is now considered to be conspecific with Flickingeria appendiculata (Bl.) Hawkes (Seidf., 1980) and is clearly not identical to Ames’ plant. Now let's take a step back. 

In the book A Selection of Native Philippine Orchids by Hans Fessel and Peter Balzer (1999), there was a Flickingeria species identified as F. xantholeuca, a plant known from Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Sumatra, Java, and Borneo. The identification of this plant was followed by Jim Cootes in his The Orchids of the Philippines which was published in 2001. The Philippine distribution was said to be in Leyte in the Visayas and Davao del Sur on Mindanao. At this point, it dawned on me that Ames' Dendrobium forcipatum is the same as F. xantholeuca. A few years later I got hold of a plant from the province of Quezon which matched the description of the 2001 publication and was able to save flowers into an alcohol solution which allowed me to take a closer look into the morphology of what people have been referring to as F. xantholeuca. Specimens from Laguna and Nueva Vizcaya augmented my examples.

The first thing I noticed is that compared to F. xantholeuca from outside the Philippines, the local plants did not have the aristate leaf tips. An arista is an extension of the midrib that is noticeably longer than the leaf blades. Looking into the flowers, I began to notice further differences, which were constant with the Philippine plants. In F. xantholeuca, the tips of the labellum side lobes are pointed and the frontal margins are erose, while it is obtuse and emarginate on local plants. The surface of the labellum is ornamented with three wavy keels, in which the median one reaches all the way going to the mentum, but this is barely distinct and noticeably shortened in Philippine specimens. I informed Jim about this and we came to the same conclusion: that Philippine plants are a species independent from F. xantholeuca and deserve to be known under a different name, and for this purpose, we will be citing the Leyte specimen as the type.

In transferring Wenzel 65 to Flickingeria, Ames’ specific epithet forcipatum could not be retained because of the already existing F. forcipata (Kraenzl.) Hawkes, a name based on Desmotrichum forcipatum Kraenzl. A new specific name, therefore, has to be sought to represent the species. Due to the fact that the Leyte specimen has been overlooked for so long which has given rise to the taxon being misidentified as F. xantholeuca, I suggested that we name the plants as Flickingeria praetermissa, the species name translating to 'neglected' in Latin. The new combination was published in 2007. 

Flickingeria praetermissa is an epiphyte on limbs and trunks of medium to tall trees in lower mixed dipterocarp forests, often exposed to sunlight and at elevations less than 300 meters. Wenzel 65 was collected on a tree limb in foothill forests at an elevation of 120 m. However, I reckon that this species can be found at slightly higher altitudes. 

In 2011, F. praetermissa was moved to the genus Dendrobium under the name Dendrobium omissum Schuit. & P.B. Adams, an act of indiscriminate lumping that I refuse to follow.