Phragmipedium kovachii is an orchid species found to be new to science in 2001, native to the Andean cloud forests of northern Peru. A species with terrestrial habit and growing in clumps of several individuals, it displays showy pink to purple flowers up to wide. It is currently considered a critically endangered species by the IUCN, due to overcollection in the wild.
Description
A terrestrial, or lithophytic orchid, Phragmipedium kovachii grows in clumps. which thereby became a synonym of P. kovachii. however, it was later moved to its own subgenus Schluckebieria.
Controversy
Michael Kovach, an American orchid collector who bought the live type specimen of P. kovachii from a roadside vendor in Peru, had smuggled the plant into the US and taken it to the Selby Botanical Gardens. An investigation led by the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and assisted by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Customs Service and the then CITES authority in Peru (INRENA) among others, brought Kovach to trial. While Selby Botanic Gardens saw its CITES permit revoked, was sentenced to a fine of $5000, and staff member Wesley Higgins received a 6-month restriction order.
A nomenclatural proposal was put forward in 2006 to declare the name Phragmipedium kovachii invalid and to add its original ad hoc publication "Selbyana vol. 23 Supplement" to the "opera utique oppressa" (ICN Appendix VI). Counterarguments were presented in several articles. The Nomenclature Committee for Vascular Plants declined to accept the proposal, stating "if all names based on specimens illegally collected or named after persons who have acted unwisely ... were to be rejected, we might have some major nomenclatural instability." The habitat of this species provides constant rainfall, organic matter and calcareous soil, with a pH of 6.8–7.1 (−7.9).
The Peruvian government, in an effort to officialize the trade of P. kovachii and reduce its illegal extraction, licensed some plant nurseries for the propagation of this species.