![](images/CattleyaTigrina_PortfeuilleDesHorticulteurs1848.jpg)
Cattleya tigrina, original plate published with the species description by Achille Richard in 1848 (Portefeuille des horticolteurs 2:166 with color plate)
May, 2024
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When Tigers Got Their Spots
![](images/TigressAndCubs4thCClevelandMuseumOfArt.jpg)
Tigress and cubs, 4th Century, Roman mosaic now in the Cleveland Museum of Art
Any number of modern scientific (Latin) names for plants and animals include the adjective tigrinus. Many of these organisms have spots, blotches, or similar markings that are definitely not stripes. In fact, modern compendia of "botanical Latin" (e.g, P. M. Eckel, A Grammatical Dictionary of Botanical Latin, 2010-2023) give meanings such as "tiger-like, marked like a tiger, i.e. spotted like a jaguar (Felis onca), the American 'tiger' or, less often, barred like the Asiatic tiger (Felis tigris) (Stearn); barred as the grain in wood."
One might suppose that the application of tiger or tigrinus to such things as "tiger lilies" (the name Lilium tigrinum seems to have been used first in 1809) or the spotted Cattleya described in 1848 as Cattleya tigrina originated with people who had never seen an actual tiger.
However, the idea that an adjective relating to tigers could be applied generally to things with spots, blotches, or similar markings can be traced back at least as early as the 18th Century, with the French adjective tigré and the taxonomic usage of tigrinus. But between Classical Latin and the 18th Century, there is a gap that we have not been able to span with citations of the adjective tigrinus from Latin documents.
Possibly unique among the modern languages frequently used by taxonomists, French happens to have an adjective tigré that means, literally, something like "made to resemble a tiger", "tigerized", or simply "resembling a tiger". As a result, species descriptions in French have a special potential to inform us about how some taxonomists understood tigrinus. One might even posit that the French understanding of tigré, which from its earliest usage has referred to things that are spotted, blotched, or otherwise marked, colored their understanding of what the Latin tigrinus ought to mean. In fact, among the early orchid species descriptions involving "tiger" names, the only languages encountered other than Latin are French and English.
However, in some parts of Latin America, the Jaguar (Panthera onca) is also known in Spanish as "el tigre", tigre, or tigre americano, in part because that is how 16th Century Spanish authors referred to it, apparently because of its markings (echoing Medieval developments to be discussed below), and not knowing its indigenous name. There does not seem to be a term in Spanish equivalent to French tigré, and the Spanish idioms involving tigre seem to refer to its fierce disposition rather than colors or patterns.
Classical Latin usage: Did tigers have spots?
Some citations illustrating the usage of tigrinus and the appearance of tigers:
Statius (d. 96 CE), Thebaid, liber 2: Qualis ubi audito venantum murmure tigris Horruit in Maculas. (As when, hearing the rustling of its prey, the tiger shivers in its spots.) (While the translation “shivers in its spots” makes good rhetoric, then as now, all this passage really tells us about the definition of macula is that it could be applied to tigers. It does not tell us that the adjective tigrinus, "of or pertaining to tigers", means "spotted". Maculatus simply means marked in some way, as opposed to being "unmarked", immaculatus.)
Pliny the Elder (d. 79 CE), Naturalis Historia, liber 8, c. 23:
Panthera et tigris macularum varietate prope solae bestiarum spectantur, ceteris unus ac suus cuique generi color est.
(Bostock & Riley translation, 1855) The panther and the tiger are nearly the only animals that are remarkable for a skin distinguished by the variety of its spots; whereas others have them of a single colour, appropriate to each species.
(Perhaps following the text more closely: The panther and tiger are almost the only animals distinguished by their various markings, while the others are of a single color, each according to its type.)
Using "species" this way in an English translation carries anachronistic implications of the (relatively) new science of taxonomy, when applied to Roman texts!
Bostock & Riley in this context cite a passage in Naturalis Historia, liber 13, c. 30, regarding wooden furniture, "tables of tiger and panther pattern":
Mensis praecipua dos in venam crispis vel in vertices parvos. illud oblongo evenit discursu ideoque tigrinum appellatur, hoc intorto et ideo tales pantherinae vocantur. sunt et undatim crispae, maiore gratia, si pavonum caudae oculos imitentur.
(Bostock & Riley translation, 1855) The principal merit of these tables is to have veins arranged in waving lines, or else forming spirals like so many little whirlpools. In the former arrangement the lines run in an oblong direction, for which reason these are called "tiger" tables; while in the latter the marks are circling and spiral, and hence they are styled "panther" tables. There are some tables also with wavy, undulating marks, and which are more particularly esteemed if these resemble the eyes on a peacock's tail.
(Or, again trying to remain closer to the original text: The most esteemed tables show the wood grain in wavy lines or in little swirls, the former running lengthwise, known as "tigrinae" (tiger grain), the other contorted and known as "pantherinae" (leopard grain), and there are also some with wavy, curly grain, even more prized if they resemble the "eyes" of the peacock’s tail.)
(Note the distinction, and the implication of a constrast, between "tiger" and "leopard" grain here! Tigers had stripes, leopards had spots (or swirls)! But, as in the first citation from Pliny, these were regarded as "markings", opposed to a uniform coloration.)
While there are many Roman mosaics depicting tigers (identifiable to us by their stripes), as well as some identified today as "leopards" or "panthers" (with leopard spots), we don’t actually know which figures in the Roman art that has come down to us were known to the Romans themselves as tigris, panthera, or perhaps something else. Mosaics, frescos, etc. generally don’t come with contemporary labels! Reasoning that the animals the Romans called tigris always had stripes, based on unlabeled images, may be a case of circular logic.
Nevertheless, the distinction implicit in the citation from Statius, marked versus unmarked fur, could give rise to the idea that tiger fur is "marked" (maculatus), and that, by extension, tigrinus could mean "resembling" a tiger by virtue of having (generic, unspecified) markings. Tigrinus seems to have come into French as tigré, and at least to later taxonomists, apparently carried with it the implication of indefinite markings, not just stripes. However, the evidence from Pliny, distinguishing and contrasting tigrinus and pantherinus (i.e., characterized by stripes versus the whorls we usually call spots when they appear on leopards, jaguars, and other wild cats) suggests that the concepts of stripes and spots were indeed separate in Roman times, and perhaps only later became conflated to give rise to the concept embodied in the French adjective tigré.
That tigers had stripes in ancient times is also implied by the Greek ἱππότιγρις, "tiger horse", apparently referring to the zebra! But no one seems to have located a clear reference to a zebra in Classical Latin, or indeed in Ancient Greek, to prove the point.
![](images/Tiger_Bestiary_BeineckeRareBooks_YaleUniversity.jpg)
Tigress distracted by mirrors while her cubs are taken away, Rothschild Canticles, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Yale University, New Haven, CT, Beinecke MS 404, circa 1300, fol. 182v. As medieval tiger illustrations go, this one is relatively realistic.
Medieval Fantasies
Is there any evidence in Medieval Latin for tigrinus meaning "spotted"? We found a modern opinion on the internet that tigrinus, in the indefinite past, referred to "everything that is striped, speckled, or spotted yellow and black or brown", but is that simply a modern generalization of how tigrinus has been used by post-medieval naturalists? Where are the medieval citations?
![](images/Tiger_Bestiary_BodleianLibrary_Oxford.jpg)
Tigress distracted by mirrors while her cubs are taken away, Ashmole Bestiary, Bodleian Library, Oxford, England, MS Ashmole 1511, early 13th Century, fol. 12r. Why is this tiger blue? The blue pigment from this era was expensive and used with care, so perhaps its use here is meant to emphasize that tigers are rare and exotic. However, in the bestiaries, tigers come in all colors.
Literature more or less about tigers in the Middle Ages seems to come almost exclusively from bestiaries, a sort of medieval equivalent of today’s bizarre conspiracy theories. Somehow, the tiger became associated with an absurd story. In brief, people for some unspecified reason wanted to steal tiger cubs (Pliny also mentions this, but not the absurdities that come next in the medieval story). Today it is French bulldog puppies that are stolen. Someone discovered that the pursuing tigress, seeking to recover her cubs, could be distracted by a mirror (or in some versions, a glass ball), and, seeing her reflection, thought it was one of her cubs, and so she would stop as if to rescue the cub, before realizing her mistake. In some versions, the tigress falls for this trick repeatedly. As a result of this medieval fake news story, there are a large number of illustrations in the medieval bestiaries, easily identifiable as images supposed to be tigers by the inclusion of the mirror or glass ball (usually depicted as a circular object with a rim of some sort), if not by labels or their placement in the manuscript. These illustrations almost never give the animal stripes! Instead, almost all of them are either spotted or, less often, unmarked, and a few have wings. At least one example has hooves. Thus, in this sort of literature, medieval tigers had spots.
![](images/Tiger_HelminghamBestiary_Yale.jpg)
Tiger with mirror, Helmingham Herbal and Bestiary, Center for British Art, Yale University, New Haven, CT, Folio C 2014 4, circa 1500, fol. 18v. In the medieval bestiaries, it is the tigress, the female, that is distracted by mirrors when trying to rescue her cubs. Here a male tiger is also distracted by a mirror.
The bestiary web site, produced by David Badke of Victoria, British Columbia, has compiled citations for the animals of the bestiaries and their documentary sources as far back as Lucian and Pliny. By the time of Gaius Julius Solinus (3rd Century), tigers still had stripes, and, apparently, there was at that time a thriving industry of stealing tiger cubs. Claudian (4th Century) explains that tiger cubs, in his time still striped, were captured as pets for the amusement of the Persian king. Around the same era, St. Ambrose gives the version with the glass ball, and from that point forward, there seems to be little interest in the appearance of tigers, other than that they are sometimes said to have unspecified markings. An English version of a bestiary by Bartholomeus Anglicus (13th Century) was published in London in an English translation by Stephan Batman in 1582: here the tiger is "spotted with divers specks", and is yet again distracted by mirrors.
![](images/Tiger_PierreDeBeauvais_BibArsenal.jpg)
Winged tiger distracted by mirrors, Bestiaire de Pierre de Beauvais, Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal, Paris, France, MS 3516, 13th Century, fol. 200r.
In spite of the bestiaries, there are historical mentions of tigers and other large animals presented as gifts to various European kings, suggesting that at least a few people were not distracted by the fabulous popular stories and had first-hand knowledge of the big cats. But, if the pervasive illustrations of tigers in the bestiaries are any indication, the ordinary understanding of what a tiger looked like was apparently extremely vague and did not include stripes! As for tigrinus, the adjective, we were not able to find any medieval citations at all, apart from copies of Pliny. The visual concept of the tiger had apparently become so indistinct that it was no longer a suitable point of comparison; the adjective no longer served a purpose.
So far, nothing that has come to our attention appears to contradict the conclusion that the use of the adjective tigrinus in the sense of "spotted or mottled" (i.e., applicable to things that are marked in some way other than striped) is a post-medieval development, certainly not part of Classical Latin usage, and apparently not attested in medieval times.
Post-medieval developments
The Renaissance saw a flurry of activity in the publication of dictionaries, in which it is possible to trace some of the evolution of modern European languages.
Jean Nicot, Thresor de la langue francoyse, tant ancienne que moderne (1606) p. 629, in the entry for the noun tigre: "Tables mouchetées et tavelées ou grivelées comme sont les tigres, Mensae tigrinae." (Why does the example concern tables? This seems to be another allusion to Pliny, and perhaps also a French preoccupation with stylish furniture.) No such usage is noted in Robert Estienne’s Dictionnaire françois-latin (1539), but the identical citation about tables is found in his 1549 edition (on Google Books). In Estienne’s 1543 Dictionarium seu latinæ linguæ thesaurus, the same citation from Pliny appears under a separate entry for tigrinus, but the text is slightly different: "Mensis præcipua dos in vena crispis, vel in vertice variis. Illud oblongo euenit discursu, ideóque tigrinæ appellantur." Here, tigrinus, as it was understood to have been used in the distant past by Pliny, seems on the verge of being transferred into French.
Grand dictionnaire de l’Académie Françoise (1696), entry for tigre, tigresse, still does not cite an adjective as such, but uses the words moucheté or mouchetez and tavelez to describe the concept. In the same volume: Taveler: moucheter, tacheter, "il ne se dit guere qu’en parlant de certains animaux dont la peau est naturellement tacheté". Tacheter: marqueter de diverses taches. "Il se dit proprement des taches qui sont sur la peau des hommes & de certains animaux". Among the definitions of Tache, "se dit aussi de certaines marques naturelles qui paroissent sur la peau". However, this edition lacks a suitable definition of moucheter. In other sources of the same period (Pierre Richelet, Dictionnaire françois, contenant generalement tous les mots, 1693), Moucheter: "C’est marquer de plusieurs petites taches noires un fond blanc" — the general sense is a random dark speckling, as if covered by flies (mouches).
The first example of tigré, the adjective, in a French dictionary seems to be Nouveau dictionnaire de l’Académie françoise, 1718: Tigré: "moucheté comme un tigre".
By 1835, Pierre-Claude Boiste, Dictionnaire universel de la langue française, Tigré, "moucheté comme un tigre, comme un léopard, une once" (in modern French, once is the snow leopard, but the same or a similar word has been applied to the lynx and other felines), and as a verb: Tigrer, "moucheter, rayer comme le léopard, le tigre". (In modern French, rayé means striped, even though that sense of rayé seems not to be included in the 1835 dictionary.) Also the flower tigridie (Latin tigridia), "tigrine, plante iridée, à belles fleurs horaires, jaunes-brunes, tachetées de noir, tripétales". Moucheté: "tacheté, comme couvert de mouches" (as if covered with flies). Tacheter: "Marquer de plusieurs taches".
Thus, by 1835, it is clear that French tigré has come to mean both spotted and striped, but the extension of moucheté (originally linked to flies and hence to spots, specks, or generally, to small dark marks) to include specifically both spots and stripes (in the entry for tigré) seems not to have been noted in earlier dictionaries.
In summary, Latin tigrinus is attested in Roman times with reference to the striped grain of wood, but apparently not in the sense of other markings such as spots, speckles, etc. However, the text from Pliny, if not quoted completely, could easily give rise to the idea that "tiger" wood grain could include markings other than just stripes. Much later, in the 16th Century and beyond, French tigre became associated not only with the animal, the tiger, but also with things that were marked in some vague, imprecise way “like a tiger”. By the 18th Century, the first example of the French adjective tigré makes it essentially equivalent to moucheté (covered with flies!), but in the manner of a tiger, as if tigers themselves were spotted or speckled, as they had commonly been depicted in the medieval bestiaries! The usage of adjectives derived from tiger by this time is not the same as their usage in Classical Latin.
And it is in the 18th Century that Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) invented what became the modern system of naming plants and animals, taxonomy. Linnaeus wrote mainly in Latin, and sometimes in Swedish, and is said never to have learned much of other languages. However, he was held in high regard throughout Europe, and so his ideas and writings were spread widely in French, English, German, Italian, etc. Linnaeus himself described some species with epithets that refer to the tiger: Cypraea tigris (Linnaeus, 1758), the Tiger Cowry, a mollusc whose shell has spots, not stripes, although in this case Linnaeus does not provide a separate description of the pattern on the shell that alludes to tigers. Another is a clam, Venus (now Codakia) tigerina (Linnaeus, 1758), often misspelled as tigrina, the description referring to concentric "stripes" or ridges on the shell. Linnaeus also described the tiger as Felis (now Panthera) tigris (1758), noting corpore maculis omnibus virgatis – with the body marked all over with stripes (virgatus: striped).
There are a number of species with the specific epithet spelled tigerin- rather than tigrin-, and in at least one case (Rana tigerina, now Hoplobatrachus tigerinus, Daudin, 1802, the Indian Bullfrog), the original publication also gives a vernacular (French) translation of the name, in this case Grenouille Tigrée, demonstrating that tigerina is simply a variant spelling. In this example, the description in the taxonomically-required Latin as well as the equivalent French tells us something about the use of the adjective: "maculis atro-fuscis tigerinis artubus insuper", and "d’un brun rougeâtre tigré de taches noirâtres en dessus; ces taches tigrées sont entourées d’une teinte jaunâtre dessus les membres et les flancs..." – here, tigerinus and tigré refer to irregular blotches or spots, not stripes.
So it was that the tiger, or the idea of the tiger, acquired spots or blotches in medieval times, and this popular misperception also passed into French about the same time modern taxonomy was invented, with the result that a number of plants and animals bearing spots but lacking stripes came be named after the tiger.
Examples of "Tigrinus" Orchid Species
![](images/ThelymitraTigrinaOW87993.png)
Thelymitra tigrina, photo from OrchidWiz, image #87993, attributed ro Ron Heberle
Thelymitra tigrina Robert Brown 1810: Latin only, "perianthio patulo maculato".
![](images/OncidiumTigrinumGrandiflorumLaurenSoule19830605.jpg)
© 1983 AOS
Oncidium tigrinum grandiflorum 'Lauren Soule' AM/AOS, exhibited at the North Jersey Orchid Society Show, Edison, NJ by Lee Soule, April 7, 1983
Oncidium tigrinum Juan José Martinez Lexarza 1825: Latin only, "Flores tres, quinque, magni, alterni, specioci, pellem tigrinam referentes... Perigonium regulare patens, sementis quinque lanceolato-ovatis lutescentibus, maculis tigrinis castaneo purpureis tota superficie variegatis... Labellum maximum luteum, immaculatum..." This one actually has stripes or bars, not just spots.
![](images/StanhopeaTigrinaSanBarGold20051268.jpg)
© 2005 Richard Clark
Stanhopea tigrina 'SanBarGold' AM/AOS, exhibited at Los Angeles monthly judging by Santa Barbara Orchid Estate, September 12, 2005
Stanhopea tigrina James Bateman ex Lind. 1838 Latin and English, sepals ... "marked with irregular longitudinal blotches... which approach or run into each other at the origin of the sepals." Petals ... "marked at their base with transverse bands..."
![](images/CattleyaTigrinaGhirardelli19981282.jpg)
© 1998 AOS
Cattleya tigrina 'Ghirardelli' HCC/AOS, exhibited at Long Beach monthly judging by Stewart Orchids, August 24, 1998
Cattleya tigrina Achille Richard 1848: French only (no Latin description, perhaps one reason why some considered this an invalid taxonomic name). Text calls the plant "CATTLEYA TIGRINA (Cattleya à fleurs tigrées)". Some modern articles call it the "Tiger Striped Cattleya", being unaware that tigrina and tigrée need not refer to stripes! The next oldest name for the same plant is Cattleya leopoldii, whose publication also appears somewhat irregular.
The taxonomic history of Cattleya tigrina in marvelously convoluted. Dr. Jack Fowlie discussed the problem in his 1977 monograph, The Brazilian Bifoliate Cattleyas and Their Color Varieties (Day Printing Corp., Pomona, CA), p. 95. Fowlie eventually located the first description of the plant as Cattleya tigrina, noting that there was no Latin description, normally considered essential for "valid publication", but his principal reason for not advocating this name in lieu of the currently popular C. leopoldii and the only slightly less popular C. guttata was that it had already taken decades for orchid growers to begin to understand that guttata and leopoldii were separate, distinct species, after a long period where a veritable parade of esteemed orchid botanists had lumped them into guttata, with the result that numerous hybrids had already been made with both forms under the latter name. Fowlie considered the difficulties that would ensue in orchid horticulture (as well as the obscurity of the journal where the species had been published — the Portefeuille des horticulteurs was then exceedlingly rare, but today easily found on the web site of the Biodiversity Heritage Library), and judged that such a change would be "unwieldy and argumentative".
The concern about how taxonomy impinged upon the practical requirements of horticulture was still a strong consideration for some authors over a decade later, when Carl Withner (The Cattleyas and Their Relatives. Volume I: The Cattleyas, 1988, Timber Press, Portland, OR, especially pp. 67-69), after enumerating the differences between guttata and leopoldii, thought that the original color plate of tigrina most closely resembled the original description of guttata, mentioning that Braem thought tigrina (again, from the original color plate) was closer to leopoldii. Withner goes on to explain why the name makes sense, pointing out that "the South American tigre, or jaguar, is a completely black-spotted, not striped, fierce feline"! — in other words, he missed the story of how the tiger got its spots, and how the jaguar came to be seen by early Spanish chroniclers in South America as tiger-like instead of leopard-like. In any case, it was only much later that orchid taxonomists were no longer sensitive to the way their pronouncements would affect the wider community of orchid horticulture: the intended audience for the work of taxonomists has changed since the 1980's.
The two species concepts, guttata and leopoldii, might have remained distinct were it not for a series of ambiguous statements. After the description by Achille (or sometimes Achilles) Richard (lacking, as we have seen, the normal Latin diagnosis), the next mention of what eventually became established as leopoldii was by John Lindley in Paxton's Flower Garden 2:129 (1852) as a horticultural form, Cattleya Leopoldii Hort., but without an "official" description, the name having been bestowed by Alexandre Verschaffelt, the grower who first flowered it in Europe about 1850. The required botanical description followed, authored by Charles Lemaire, first in a brief note without the Latin diagnosis in 1854 (L'Illustration horticole, Tome I, Miscellanées, p. 68), and then with the formal description in 1855 (L'Illustration horticole, Tome II, t. 69), in both cases referring to it as Cattleya Leopoldii Hort. Versch. However, Fowlie reports, Lemaire, in the "fine print", also refers to it as "C. guttata var. Leopoldii" — but in context, what that passage, in the French text, actually says (our translation of the French) is that "It is very close to C. granulosa and C. guttata, but it seems to us sufficiently different to regard it as distinct. Nevertheless, one might strictly speaking ("à la rigueur") consider it a form of the latter, but a form infinitely more developed and quite superior in beauty." Here Lemaire uses the conditional tense, expressing a hypothetical taxonomic alternative that the most fastidious taxonomist might adopt, but clearly expressing his opinion and decision that specific rank is the best solution. In French, "à la rigueur" refers to a view that is fastidious in the extreme, an outside possibility.
Meanwhile, Linden's nursery in Brussels had acquired a large shipment of plants from Brazil, including, as mentioned in 1860 (Jean Jules Linden, with the collaboration of Jules-Emile Planchon, Heinrich Gustav Reichenbach, and G. Lüddemann, Pescatorea: iconographie des orchidées, plate 43, text on p. [55]), a plant illustrated as "Cattleya guttata var. Leopoldii Linden & Rchb.f.". Reichenbach had apparently misconstrued Lindley's original description of guttata as applying also to his leopoldii plant that had been described by Lemaire, and the conflation that seems to stem from Lemaire's "fine print" was now firmly established. As Fowlie observed, Lindley had seen both plants alive, but he died before he had an opportunity to reiterate his view that they were properly distinct.
Orchid experts such as Robert Allen Rolfe and Alfred Cogniaux again made the case that the two forms were distinct in the 1890's, but the pendulum later swung back in favor of combining them. We would have to wait until about the 1970's before the growers again became aware of the differences, even though much later, in 1988, Withner observed that the Royal Horticultural Society was still treating them as a single species, guttata, for purposes of hybrid registrations. That change was eventually made (2002, long after most growers had understood that two different species were involved), but a few years later, the RHS, following a decision by the World Monocots Checklist (now superseded by the World Checklist of Vascular Plants), recognized C. tigrina as the correct name, having priority over C. leopoldii, with the publication of the orchid hybrid registrations for April-June, 2006 (Published in Orchid Review 114, Number 1271, September-October, 2006), and referring to Braem, Guido J. (1984) Die bifoliaten Cattleyen Brasiliens (Brücke-Verlag Kurt Schmersow, Hildesheim, Germany) 1:74-79 for discussion and synonymy — in other words, acceptance of Braem's views on the names of this species did not come about until over 20 years after he had suggested the change. By that time, 2006, the confusion caused by the long-standing decision to combine guttata and leopoldii for purposes of registration had been largely untangled, or at least understood, and the change to tigrina was no longer considered prohibitively "unwieldy and argumentative".
The publications cited above (Fowlie, 1977; Braem, 1984; and Withner, 1988) present rather different views of the relationships involved, and Achille Richard's type specimen has been located in Paris, another ingredient for a better understanding of the taxonomy, see notes below†.
![](images/HoulletiaTigrinaMayanWarrior19860711.jpg)
© 1986 AOS
Houlletia tigrina 'Mayan Warrior' HCC/AOS, exhibited at Fifth Annual Exposición de Orquídeas Salamá, Salamá, Guatemala by Otto Mittelstaedt, September 14, 1986
Houlletia tigrina Linden ex Lindl. 1853: Latin and English, pattern only mentioned in the English description, tepals "richly mottled and variegated with deep rose", and on the lip, "cross bands of blood-red", but no direct explanation of why the specific epithet was chosen.
![](images/CymbidiumTigrinumHillside20051144.jpg)
© 2005 Bob Stillman
Cymbidium tigrinum 'Hillside' HCC/AOS, exhibited at San Francisco monthly judging by Ron Parsons, June 7, 2005
Cymbidium tigrinum Charles Samuel Pollock Parish ex Hooker 1864: Latin and English: Spot-lipped Cymbidium, "labello longe unguiculato trilobo albo purpureo-maculato", and the English description notes that the mid-lobe of the lip is "barred transversely with short streaks of dark purple", which in the accompanying plate are widely spaced oval spots, not forming distinct bars.
![](images/TrichocentrumTigrinumBrightEyes19800982.jpg)
© 1980 AOS
Trichocentrum tirginum 'Bright Eyes' AM/AOS, exhibited at Los Angeles monthly judging by Sharon Conrow, July 14, 1980
Trichocentrum tigrinum Jean Jules Linden & H. G. Reichenbach filius, 1869: Other than the fact that the flowers are "coloured like those of Cattleya Aclandiae", there is nothing in the description alluding to tigers.
![](images/MormodesTigrinaClownAlley20010340.jpg)
© 2001 Mark Doty
Mormodes tigrina 'Clown Alley' CBR/AOS, exhibited at Orchid Society of Minnesota Show, St. Paul, MN by John Stubbings, January 27, 2001
Mormodes tigrina João Barbosa Rodrigues 1877: Latin and French, the only reference perhaps alluding to tigers is in the French, "perianthe jaune-sale, très-finement moucheté de brun-pourpre".
![](images/CatasetumTigrinumSVOSupermoon20226054.jpg)
© 2022 Arthur Pinkers
Catasetum tigrinum 'SVO Supermoon' AM/AOS, exhibited at Long Beach monthly judging by Fred Clarke, June 27, 2022
Catasetum tigrinum H. G. Reichenbach filius 1881: Latin and English, the only reference alluding to tigers is in the English, "white sepals and petals, the last unusually broad, all with numerous cinnamon-colored bars", which in photographs are a mixture of spots and short transverse bars scattered over a pale background.
Cytropodium tigrinum Linden 1881: No description as originally published, apart from the fact that it had been collected along the Rio Branco; this was merely a name on a list of plants recently introduced into commerce by the Linden nursery. While the name is usually considered a junior synonym of Cyrtopodium punctuatum, a recent publication speculates that it could be an as-yet-undescribed species.
![](images/DendrobiumSpectabileThorntonGnome20215869.jpg)
© Arnold Gum 2021
Dendrobium spectabile 'Thornton Gnome' AM/AOS, exhibited at Los Angeles monthly judging by the Thornton Conservatory, December 11, 2021
Dendrobium tigrinum Rolfe ex Hemsl. 1891: Latin and English, the only allusion to tigers is "sepals and petals very undulate in their basal half, where they are also spotted and somewhat veined with dark purple". Now considered a synonym of Dendrobium spectabile, which is very definitely adorned by various stripes, bars, and spots.
![](images/EpidendrumTigrinumEvergreen19891134.jpg)
© 1989 Mark Doty
Epidendrum tigrinum 'Evergreen' CHM/AOS, exhibited at Tacoma monthly judging by Will Chantry, November 18, 1989. Whether this plant should now be considered Epidendrum cristatum is not known.
Epidendrum tigrinum Martín Sessé & José Mariano Moziño 1894: Latin only, sometimes considered an illegitimate name, "Petala oblonga, crasiuscula, reflexa, intus purpureo punctata...", no other explanation for the specific epithet. Now referred to Epidendrum cristatum (Ruiz & Pavón, 1798).
![](images/MaxillariaTigrinaOW136839.png)
Maxillaria tigrina, photo from OrchidWiz, image #136839, attributed to Art Vogel
Maxillaria tigrina Charles Schweinfurth 1968, the flower is actually striped: Latin and English, "flos pro planta magnus, conspicue striatus".
Post-script: A Thought Experiment
The invention of the moveable-type printing press around 1440 unleashed astounding changes in the way information was spread and used. What might have happened if that invention had included Artificial Intelligence?
The first step in deploying Artificial Intelligence in the year 1440 would be to train it, by feeding it all of the assembled knowledge found in the best libraries. It would learn the classics, both Greek and Roman, and the vast corpus of manuscripts dutifully copied by over a thousand years of scribling monks as well as secular clerks. In particular, it would absorb all of the bestiaries.
Then, when someone Googled "tigris", the Artificial Intelligence engine of the printing press would produce an essay about the tiger, printed on fine paper with the latest moveable type, describing an animal with indistinct spots and sometimes wings, easily distracted by mirrors.
It has been many decades since we were first introduced to computers. The earliest definition we heard was, "The computer is nothing but a high-speed idiot". This was followed, maybe a decade later, by the maxim, "Garbage in, garbage out". For computers to generate anything of value, the input must have value as well. Before Artificial Intelligence can have something meaningful or even helpful to say on the subject of tigers, for example, first-hand information and analysis about tigers is required, originally produced and compiled by humans. The thousand-year attempt to assemble knowledge about tigers based on copying and recopying faulty descriptions was a failure, for lack of evidence-based inquiry. Then as now, even with Artificial Intelligence, the maxim holds: Garbage in, garbage out.
Footnote
†A discussion of Braem's publication and its relationship to those of Fowlie and Withner may be helpful here:
Cattleya: Die bifoliaten Cattleyen Brasiliens, Guido J. Braem, Brücke-Verlag Kurt Schmersow, Hildesheim, Germany. No copyright date, ISBN 3-87105-016-4. Estimated publication dates as early as 1981 and as late as 1986 have been found on the internet. Kew uses 1984. At least one entry in WorldCat specifies "[1977?]-1986", perhaps indicating that the earliest possible publication date is 1977, since it cites Fowlie's monograph published in that year. Withner uses 1984 as well. The 1986 date might be the date of publication of the earliest known bibliographic citation of this volume. The earliest notice in any form located so far is the announcement that it was a "New Publication", in an advertisement by the publisher in the AOS Bulletin 53(9):975 (September, 1984). German-English parallel text, but the English frequently differs from the German, and sometimes contains additional information. No credit is given for the English translation, although conceivably it was prepared by the author himself, and in places might actually have preceded the German version. The text contains some German peculiarities, such as the abbreviation usw. (=und so weiter, literally "and so forth"), rendered in the English text as a. s. o. (="and so on") instead of the conventional etc., suggesting that the English text was not written by a native English speaker. There is no bibliography. There are many in-line bibliographic citations, but many statements lack references, especially those regarding the limited information about habitats.
There is no indication that the author has studied these species in the wild, or that he has knowledge of their habitats apart from whatever he gleaned from Fowlie’s monograph and earlier sources. Habitat information is generally limited to a few lines, and there seems to be no cultural information at all.
The author generally ascribes differences in flowering season to differences in climate and "geography", while Fowlie treats the flowering seasons as inherent adaptations, genetically determined. These interpretations sometimes lead to different conclusions.
The author seems to have little experience with hybrids, the process by which they are registered and named, or with the history of the use of species names by orchid growers generally. The work was apparently intended to convey the taxonomy and description of the bifoliate Cattleya species to an "amateur" audience, but without any overt consideration of what that audience might want to know about them. There is no indication that the author intended a formal taxonomy.
The author notes four points made by Fowlie in the latter's choice to continue using the name leopoldii:
- No type specimen for Richard’s Cattleya tigrina is known;
- There was no Latin diagnosis;
- The publication was difficult to locate (Braem says Fowlie called the volume "obscure", but he did not; notably, Fowlie does not tell us how he discovered the existence of this species description);
- The names leopoldii and guttata (including "guttata var. leopoldii") had been in use for so long, discussed by many famous botanists, and had been used in so many hybrids that it would be "unwieldy" (although that term, from Fowlie, is not used in the German text, but only in the English text). (In fact, leopoldii was not permitted as part of orchid hybrid registration until much later, 2002!)
Further, the English text specifies that Richard's description had not been referenced for 130 years, while the German text says only "lange Jahre".
It is, of course, the fourth problem that led Fowlie to avoid formal recognition of the priority of tigrina. Fowlie was sensitive to the effect such a change would have on the orchid growers of his time, who were still struggling to distinguish guttata and leopoldii, which Braem does very little to clarify, apart from noting the larger flowers of leopoldii and the differences in the way the side lobes of the labellum cover (partially or entirely) the column. Braem suggests the differences in flowering season are due to climate and geography. (Braem does not include an illustration of the unrolled labellum, but does mention the deep sinuses separating the lateral lobes from the midlobe in leopoldii. Fowlie illustrates and describes the unrolled labella of both species, which, at least in his illustrations, are very distinct from one other. Withner does not describe the differences in the shape of the lateral lobes of the labellum, but he does illustrate the labellum of guttata, p. 23. It is impossible to establish from these accounts how reliable or variable this characteristic may be. And, as pointed out by both Fowlie and Withner, there had already been so much confusion in horticulture between the two species, comparisons involving plants in cultivation labeled as either guttata or leopoldii would be problematic.)
Carl Withner mentions Cattleya tigrina in the first volume of his monograph (The Cattleyas and Their Relatives: Volume I. The Cattleyas, 1988, Timber Press, Portland, Oregon), especially pp. 67-69. The original description from 1848 included no measurements at all, but Withner refers to "plants" of C. tigrina that have "no more than 2-3 flowers per growth; and the flowers are also small, about 1½-2 in. (4-5 cm.) across". Where did these "plants" come from, and how were they identified as C. tigrina, which seems not to have been mentioned in modern times prior to Fowlie’s monograph? Was Withner misled by "plants" that were labeled as tigrina, believing them to be the form illustrated in 1848? The mystery is deepened by a photograph on p. 69, labeled "Cattleya tigrina (C. guttata?)", but the volume does not list credits for any of the photographs. Withner indicates that the plants then referred to (by unknown growers) as tigrina were even smaller than those of C. guttata. Withner was here considering the question of whether the "plants" then (1988) labeled as C. tigrina represented a taxon distinct from C. guttata and C. leopoldii, and preferred to reserve judgement, but their existence seems to have influenced his understanding of the differences and similarities between guttata and leopoldii. Perhaps this circumstance illustrates better than any other argument the difficulty that Fowlie perceived: Without additional information, it was impossible to assign the name tigrina definitively to living plants, as the published description was simply too vague. Guttata and leopoldii were known from specific locations, and their descriptions, preserved material, and living specimens provided a good range of measurements and a continuity of identifications. The only clear characteristic of the illustration from 1848 was that the column was clearly visible in side view, as explicitly noted in the accompanying text, favoring leopoldii rather than guttata in the absence of any other distinctions, such as measurements. In Withner’s photograph of "tigrina", the column is not exposed. It remains to be established whether the origin of the "tigrina" plants discussed by Withner can be established. Withner notes that the original plate from 1848 was reproduced on the cover of the September, 1984 issue of Die Orchidee. There are also are several items in Withner’s "Selected References" that need to be checked, but so far, no additional citations, photographs, or figures of "tigrina" from 1848 until Fowlie's time have been located.
In this connection, we note that there is at least one mention on the internet of an herbarium sheet from Paris, bearing a specimen purported to be the same Cattleya tigrina, but the date is cited as 1838, long before the specimen described by Achille Richard bloomed in 1847 (see the article by Greg Allikas, June, 2010 on the American Orchid Society web site). There are in fact three herbarium sheets at the Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, 57 rue Cuvier, Paris: MNHN-P-P00407301, MNHN-P-P00407302, and MNHN-P-P00407303, all digitized, from the herbarium collection of Louis Claude and Achille Richard (in spite of the inconsistent punctuation, it appears that the "Louis Claude" on this label was in fact Louis Claude Marie Richard, 1754-1821, the father of Achille Richard, 1794-1852).
The first sheet, designated TYPE, is labeled Cattleya tigrina macranthera A. R., Brésil. The ink showing through from the back of this label is also visible, in mirror image, "Cayenne. Le Prieur. 1847" — Monsieur Le Prieur is described elsewhere as François René Mathias Leprieur or Le Prieur, 1799-1870, a "pharmacien de la marine", a pharmacist in the French navy, and he was a well-known collector at the time in French Guyana. However, there is no evidence he ever collected in Brazil, and it is possible the back of the label for the Cattleya tigrina type specimen is irrelevant to the provenance of the specimen; the label, a convenient scrap of paper originally pertaining to some other specimen, may simply have been turned over and re-used to indicate the name bestowed on the specimen after it was first designated (on the other, earlier label on the same herbarium sheet) "Cattleya spec de Bresil. Les pseudobulb ressemblent à Cattleya guttata. 45 cm de long. pseudobulb clavatis subteretibus." The herbarium sheet bears no other date, and the 1847 date on the reverse of the label may be completely irrelevant. The specimen itself consists of a single flower and a single leaf. The flower is in poor condition, and a small piece of printed paper has been inserted between the proximal portion of the labellum and what appears to be the folded side-lobe of the labellum and the petal, the column itself completely hidden. The lateral lobe of the labellum is apparently partly overlaid with a petal, and from the way the flower is folded, it is impossible to make out the shape of the labellum, apart from the distal part of the midlobe. The length of the dried petal appears to be about 4.2 cm, so the natural spread of the flower (after drying) must have been about 8-9 cm. Fowlie reports that the petals of leopoldii (in life) are around 4-5 cm in length, those of guttata, 3.6-4.4 cm; in other words, this specimen itself is not particularly helpful in its present state.
The second sheet, designated ISOTYPE, consists of three flowers, a pseudobulb, and a leaf. One flower is arranged to show the lip from below, another from above, and the distal end of the midlobe is visibly cleft, the lateral lobes acute, ending directly above the end of the column, and separated from the midlobe by deep sinuses. These features are consistent with Fowlie's figure of the labellum of leopoldii. The petals appear to be about 4 cm in length.
The second sheet also provides more information about the provenance of the plant: labeled Cattleya tigrina, it was collected in 1838 in Brazil by M. Peixoto (not yet identified), and bloomed in July, 1847 in the botanic garden of the "Faculté de Médecine", where it was harvested by A. Rivière. There is a small rectangular glue stain next to this label, suggesting that something else may have been attached to the sheet at some point. (Possibly the unexplained glue residue is where a small label with the word "TYPE" was attached. The dimensions are similar to those of a "TYPE" label on some other herbarium sheets.)
The third sheet bears a modern label C. tigrina A. Rich. 2004, indicating it had been assigned by the museum to that species in 2004. The original label is "Cattleya tigrina macranthera A. R. Brésil Mr. Peixoto. (Le nouveau) août 1844". The specimen consists of two flowers and the spike from which they have become detached. One flower has been manipulated so that the column is exposed, and the lateral lobe of the labellum folded under it. The other flower has the column exposed, with the entire lip unrolled beneath it, showing that the distal portion of the lateral lobes is broadly rounded, not acute. No scale was photographed with this sheet, so the dimensions are uncertain. What is the significance of the name "macranthera", which appears also (as a variety or subspecies name?) on the type specimen but not in the published description? It seems never to have been published, "validly" or otherwise, and is not noted, as far as we have been able to determine, as a synonym, nomen nudem, or any other sort of taxonomic name, by any other source. And what of "Le nouveau"? The first specimen from Mr. or M. Peixoto was received in 1838. Perhaps he sent another specimen in 1844, that Richard thought was the same species? However, the details of the labellum do not seem to match the first two sheets, and, in hindsight, with the knowledge of the existence of two similar species, guttata and leopoldii, differing in the shape and arrangement of the midlobes of the labellum, there is no guarantee that the plant on this third sheet is what is now called tigrina, and not guttata.