On Aerides elongata Bl. (Orchidaceae)

Summary. An examination of the type of Aerides elongata Bl. shows it to belong to the genus Renanthera Lour., not to Porphyrodesme Schltr. In 1972 L. A. Garay transferred Aerides elongata Bl. to the genus Porphyrodesme Schltr. His only evidence was an observation by H. N. Ridley (1896, p. 354) that the spur of the labellum of the species described by Ridley as Renanthera elongata Lindl. was dilated and contained nectar, whereas the other species of Renanthera known to Ridley had spurs not dilated and lacking nectar. Garay had seen neither Blume's type nor a specimen of Ridley's. By implication, he denied that the plants named Renanthera elongata in my book on the orchids of the Malay Peninsula (1953) were correctly assigned to Renanthera. The taxonomic history of the species is confused, and the books available to me when I was in Singapore did not mention Blume's basionym, citing the species as R. elongata Lindl. I had long wished to clear up this matter, and recently when I was at the Rijksherbarium at Leiden I asked Dr E. F. de Vogel to examine Blume's type, which he kindly did. Lindley (1833) transferred Aerides elongata Bl. to Renanthera without comment, merely repeating Blume's brief description. The fact that he had not seen a specimen is indicated by his later publication (1843) of an illustration under the name R. matutina which in fact represents a plant of R. elongata. Then in 1849 Blume published a new name R. micrantha for a Philippine specimen, not mentioning his Aerides elongata. In 1855 Reichenbach published a description and illustration of R. micrantha, referring to R. elongata, of which he had seen no specimen, as 'species obscura'. But in 1857 Reichenbach stated that R.