"Kay Easton" wrote
TV tonight - Rachel de Thame
'a national Collection is a collection of a single *species*' ...
then
almost in the same breath 'the National collection of Crocus' ... so
all
crocus are the same species, are they?

Is this TV dumbing down and protecting its viewers from difficult
words
like 'genus' which they don't understand?
It surely can't be Rachel de T herself who doesn't understand the
difference?

This sort of thing does get me cross!
Kay Easton

The Webster dictionary
(http://machaut.uchicago.edu/cgi-bin/...h?WORD=species) has the
following.........

3. In zoölogy and botany, a species is an ideal group of individuals
which are believed to have descended from common ancestors, which
agree in essential characteristics, and are capable of indefinitely
continued fertile reproduction through the sexes. A species, as thus
defined, differs from a variety or subspecies only in the greater
stability of its characters and in the absence of individuals
intermediate between the related groups.

4. A sort; a kind; a variety; as, a species of low cunning; a species
of generosity; a species of cloth.

I like that - "a species of low cunning" - they probably mean
knotweed, marestail etc :~))
Jenny