page_title: Pinguicula orchidioides
section_title: Botanical history
hierarchical_section_title: Pinguicula orchidioides / Botanical history
caption_attribution_description: Illustration of Pinguicula moranensis, titled "Pinguicola orchidioides".
context_page_description: Pinguicula orchidioides is a perennial rosette-forming insectivorous herb native to Mexico and Guatemala. A species of butterwort, it forms summer rosettes of flat, succulent leaves up to 5 centimeters long, which are covered in mucilaginous glands that attract, trap, and digest arthropod prey. Nutrients derived from the prey are used to supplement the nutrient-poor substrate that the plant grows in. Uniquely among Pinguicula species from the Americas, p. orchidioides produces gemma-like basal buds which elongate into stolons and serve as a means of asexual reproduction. In the winter the plant forms a non-carnivorous rosette of small, fleshy leaves that conserves energy while food and moisture supplies are low. Single purple flowers appear between July and September on upright stalks up to 22 centimeters long.
  The species was first described in 1844 by Alphonse Pyrame de Candolle, but following an unfortunate misidentification by his contemporary William Jackson Hooker, was relegated to the ranks of botanical synonymy and generally forgotten until it was rediscovered through the works of botanists in the 1990s.
context_section_description: Pinguicula orchidioides was first described by French-Swiss botanist Alphonse Louis Pierre Pyramus de Candolle in 1844 based on collections by G. Andrieux (130).  De Candolle, in subdividing the genus Pinguicula, included the species in the newly created section Orcheosanthus along with other species with purple, deeply bilabiate corollas with 5 sub-equal lobes, a short floral tube, and a large spur not protruding past this tube.
  Two years later, Hooker described a plant he saw growing at Kew Botanical Gardens and, thinking it to be similar to Candolle's P. orchidioides, applied that name.  Unfortunately, this specimen was actually a P. moranensis var. neovolcanica, causing great confusion for taxonomists who thereafter treated P. orchidioides as a synonym of P. caudata or P. macrophylla.
  Recognition of the species was only maintained by Sprague (1928), who contended that De Candolle's species was discrete from the plant described by Hooker.  Casper, while omitting the species from his revision of the genus in 1966, noted that P. orchidioides auct. non A.DC.: Hook. was probably a nomen dubium vel ambiguum.  However, the identification of P. orchidioides A.DC. was left unaddressed and was forgotten, so that when Hans Luhrs described stoloniferous Pinguicula specimens in 1995, he did so under a new name: P. stolonifera.
  It wasn't until 1998 that the species was re-described under the name P. orchidioides by Mexican Pinguicula specialist Sergio Zamudio.  He noted its distinction from other species based on leaf shape, stolon production, flower morphology and geographical isolation (from P. oblongiloba).
caption: Hooker's "P. orchidioides", in reality P. moranensis
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