Hey...

I love cypripediums, and I was planning on having all of them in my garden... Someday...

But as I was reading about the Cypripediums on wikipedia, it first says there are 47 species.
Later on, it suddenly says "There are approximately 356 species in this genus"..

So I was thinking, WHAT?!?! How could that be? Is that including natural hybrids and different variants of the same species??

How many species are there, and if somebody knows, how many, if counting all the different variants?? (356?)

thanks...
kenneth

The first number (47) is pretty close to the number of recognized species of Cypripedium.
There are a number of varieties of these species, natural hybrids and artificial hybrids also.
There is no method I'm aware of accurately determining the total from all of these groups.

I have not counted them all but maybe 356 can be including Cyps Paphs Phrags and mexipedium(seems high but can fit)

Don't believe everything you read on wikipedia, never ever too much reliable information since anyone can just join and post whatever they want. 356 species of Cypripediums? I don't think so!

A reliable site is www.w-frosch.de (http://www.w-frosch.de).

Nick is right, Frosch's site has the most current, broadly recognized species to date as well as all of the registered hybrids. Since the 90's several other species have been described or proposed, but haven't attained recognition by the international community yet. The most recent proposed species is a large flowered plant from western China that looks much like an "alba" form of C. guttatum, C. boufordianum (AKA C. xiangchengense). All the scientists I've talked to so far consider it just a form of the previously recognized species. More research will be needed and hopefully will happen before every one of them is stripped from the wild (if they haven't been already). Others will follow to be sure.

Okay, thank you very much!
I'm counting on 47 diffrent species then.. :thumbsup:

Thank you for the help.. :D