Identification of Vietnamese Paphiopedilum Species Using Vegetative Morphology

Abstract

Background: Discrimination of Paphiopedilum species using floral morphology has been used effectively and commonly due to distinct features of their reproductive parts. Most classification references also focus on description of flower morphology and structure. Nevertheless species preservation meets great problems when illegal trading plants are mostly at non-flowered or plantlet stages. Molecular approaches have been applied and obtained highly precise results but spent time and could not rate 100% of resolution over the genus. Thus, quickly identification using only vegetative characteristics would be an efficient support for other distinguishing methods and a remarkable contribution to the detection and prevention of Paphiopedilum ilicit sales.
 Aims: In this research we aimed to describe in details leaf features of Paphiopedilum species in Vietnam serving for quick and easy discriminating species without flower present or laboratory techniques.
 Study Design: Observed variables based on qualitative features of leaf shape, color, vein feature, thickness, toughness and quantitative features of leaf size were saved and organized using Microsoft Excel 2010.
 Place and Duration of Study: Tay Nguyen Institute for Scientific Research, Agricultural Genetics Institute, between November 2018 and November 2019.
 Methodology: We minutely analyzed the leaf morphology of nineteen species and two variants which belongs to Vietnamese Paphiopedilum population in an order manner from parameters that easiest to be realized to the less clearly traits for the most efficient recognition even to the one who is not botanist.
 Results: 16 out of 20 species were identified using leaf morphology. This rate was up to 100% when combining morphological and molecular methods without the present of their flowers. An artificial key to genus Paphiopedilum using the vegetative details was first time established.
 Conclusion: Leaf morphology can be effectively used as the first step for identifying Paphiopedilum species. Our results provided useful tool in severally or in combination with molecular methods in biodiversity and commercial management of these valuable species.

Population, habitat characteristic, and modelling of Endangered Orchid, Paphiopedilum javanicum in Mt. Lawu, Java, Indonesia

“…(i) The conservation forest is under Great Forest Park (TAHURA) KGPA Mangkunegoro I management (230 ha), and (ii) the protection and production forest are managed by Indonesia Forest Agency (Perum PERHUTANI) (52,384 ha) which include Mount Lawu Muda and Mount Lawu Purba. According to van Steenis (1972), the average rainfall in all mountains in Java, including Mount Lawu, ranges from 2,000-3,000 mm per year. Mount Lawu can even reach 4,000 mm per year to be categorized as very high (Herawati et al 2018).…”

“…The leaves have a mosaic pattern of dark green patches on the upper surface due to the uneven distribution of chlorophyll. The mosaic is specific for each Paphiopedilum species (Vu et al 2019). In Mount Lawu, P. javanicum faces population and habitat problems.…”

Morphology and DNA marker for distinguishing Paphiopedilum hangianum and Paphiopedilum emersonii from Vietnam

“…These species give the most beautiful flowers and are very popular not only in Vietnam but also in many countries around the world. Morphologically these two species could not be distinguished without flowers (Averyanov et al 2004;Dang et al 2017;Vu et al 2019).…”

“…Traditional methods based on morphological characteristics are not found suitable for the identification of these two species before flowering; therefore, a combination of traditional and modern molecular markers-based techniques like DNA barcodes can be an alternative to this problem (Xu et al 2014;Vu et al 2019;Bui et al 2022, Cahyaningsih et al 2022, Worthy et al 2022. DNA barcoding molecular identification method provides accurate and reliable data to identify target species with the help of selected molecular markers by passing a specific DNA region.…”

“…The molecular marker trnH-psbA has been widely used for identification purposes in previous studies, with species resolution up to 100% across a wide range of 72 plant genera (Kress and Erickson 2007) or over a small range of species within a genus (Parveen et al 2012;Bolson et al 2015). In addition, the combination of multiple loci of the trnH-psbA, rpoB, rpoC1, rbcL, and matK has been recommended for taxonomy and phylogenetic studies (Gorniak et al 2014;Vu et al 2019).…”