It seems this thread has got a bit warmed up. If I'm going to be honest there is a part of me that wanted to wade in on this debate
... and just because a particular word was used in a way that for me is as a red flag is to a bull. I'll explain this below, but first I would hazard a guess that Tenman didn't intend to be culturally insensitive and by way of mixing things up a bit, and to add another perspective, I'd like to relate an anecdote of my own failure of cultural awareness that resulted from my own little obsession with furan or neos as I've been calling them (lazy typist !).
By way of providing some context to this little story, and I'm sure that other neo fans can relate to this, is just how I came to develop such a passion for these little plants. A large part is down to the oriental sense of aesthetics which struck a chord with me. It's not all just about the classification of the cultivars and the Meikan, but about how they are grown, presented and appreciated as well. I'm unaware of any equivalent tradition that has arisen amongst western orchidists. I've even been doing an evening pottery class and having great fun learning to work with clay, not to mention making new friends! ... and all because of a fascination with a tradition from another culture ... I simply decided that I wanted to make my own neo pots. Anyway, I stumbled across a new vendor based in London who sells plants within the EU via ebay (
http://greenypottery.blogspot.com/) and for those on this side of the pond I can recommend them. Now most of my learning about neos has come from this forum and the contributions from Lanmark, KyushuCalanthe et.al., and of course Glen and the NWO website. This means I've learned the Japanese cultivar names. The Greeny Pottery ebay site sells them by their Korean names. In communication with this vendor (who is Korean) I asked whether it was possible to put the Japanese names on their site as well. The reply was something along the lines of ... Why don't you just learn and use the Korean names? Oops! OK so I trod in it a bit.
I've learned to use the kanji that they give on this site to look up the Japanese names in the three fukiran books I have, and for most of their plants this is a solution, but for some I simply don't have the information. What I should do post a list of the ones that I have worked out in the resource section ... just need to figure out how to post kanji ? For example Jucheonwang = Shutennou.
Anyhow, I've learned something from this thread ... which is why google translate gives "hukiran" for some of the japanese vendor websites. Some of the translations of descriptions of plants are amusing also. One striped variety had a rather dull main growth which had produced two boldly striped younger growths that looked great. The translated description was "parent better take care as children feeling fancy" ... partly lost in translation I guess.
As for the "red flag" word, it's "scientific". I've spent my life working as a scientist, trained as a microbiologist ,I migrated into medical research, mostly cancer research simply because that is where the money is, and it is a complex and interesting disease. What irks me is when the word "scientific" is used in a dispute as though it's a strike with a baseball bat with "THE TRUTH" written on it in big letters. In one place I worked the director of the division would review all manuscripts prior to being submitted for publication. He had a rubber stamp with the letters "BOLLOCKS" which he'd stamp with red ink over any paragraph he didn't like !
Cheers,
Tim