Actually Jim, I’m inclined to say that this is one of those situations where we will simply have to agree to disagree. To begin with, when each name is properly cited there is minimal chance of confusion. The name of the cultivar would be written in single quotes and without italics, as Peony ‘Chameleon’ or Paeonia ‘Chameleon’. That other entity would be written Paeonia x chamaeleon Troitsky ex Grossheim or Paeonia x chamaeleon. [I typed this message as an html document, with italics; if my italics do not survive into the version posted, much of the sense of this message will be obscured.] There is no way to prevent people from formatting the names incorrectly and becoming confused. The registrars of the world can be as careful as their task requires them to be, but it’s human nature for us to mess these things up. Furthermore, careful speakers pronounce the words chameleon and chamaeleon differently. For me, the clincher would be the high degree of improbability that these two names would be found in the same discussion outside of the sort of recherché discussion we’re having now. These words exist in different worlds, and the sort of person who enters the more formal world of botanical nomenclature is likely to be the sort of person who knows the difference. I don’t see a problem with maintaining both names. Indeed, it’s a good training example for people learning the differences among the various sorts of nomenclature we use. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7 My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/