Inter-generic hybrids are formally identified with a cross symbol prefixing their name. This symbol looks like a small letter “x”. Before the advent of UNICODE, this symbol was not present in most computer fonts, thus the common practice was to substitute the cross symbol for with the lower case letter “x”. This convention allows for easy entry of these names and has been adopted by The Compleat Botanica.

Note that the first letter of a species names is always capitalized (this is automatically done for you by the software). In the case of inter-generic hybrids the “x” is not considered to be the first letter.