"White Monkey" wrote in message
m...
He deals
primarily with species and naturally occuring hybrids, but reading his
work
with a critical eye will give you a sense of what is and what is not
possible, and the kinds of difficulties in identifying plants. But to
get
the most out of it, you need to ask questions like, "what is the
empirical
basis for this claim?" and "Is that judgement reasonable given the
empirical
evidence he has given relating to it?" And once you have extended your
readings to other books on phalanopsis taxonomy, you can begin to ask
questions like "Is this judgement reasonable given all the empirical
evidence I have studied in all these references?"

Understood. Isn't that just an element of good research?

Yes, but you'd be surprised at the number of undergraduate students I have
met who seem to believe that if it is written, it must be true, and who
consequently are baffled when two or more souces don't agree. Some of these
are even naive enough to believe everything they read in the newspaper.

Once you get a better
handle on taxonomy, you will gain an appreciation for the fact that in
many
many cases it is not possible to accurately identify an unlabelled
horticultural specimen.

Actually, I have a very good grounding in zoological taxonomy (old and
new)
and know a fair bit about herbs' and spices' names too, so I do understand
what you mean, and it won't be too difficult to pick up the new terms.

I even once had a job that often involved trying to apply a name under
which
to sell finches that had come out of an aviary that had been undergoing
uncontrolled hybridization in someone's back yard for decades. Quite a lot
of them can cross-breed, and not very many of the offsring come up mules.
Often it was totally impossible, but we'd try--"Call it a Society Siskin",
"Call it a Zebra Bleu"... so I won't be surprised if the very best I can
do
with the phal's turns out to be, say, "Probably some golden sunshine
hybrid". But I'd like to give narrowing it down that far the old college
try!

So you've encountered the kind of impossibility that Wendy was speaking of,
but in a slightly different context. As a theoretical ecologist, I tend to
be quite critical of taxonomic work as many classifications strike me as
suspect. As an example, in Canada we have one native species of carp
(IIRC), and another group of fish that some taxonomist has called wild
goldfish, and these two have been placed in different genera. However,
morphometrically, they are identical apart from minor differences in the
number of pharyngeal teeth, something that can be checked only by dissecting
the specimen. When the two are in different lakes, only an expert can
distinguish them, but when they are in the same lake, they hybridize so
readily that not even an expert has a hope of distinguishing them. And,
ecologically, they are identical. They eat the same things, and they use
the same habitat in the same way. Their behaviour is identical. So this is
a case where their classification into even separate species let alone into
different genera is wholly unjustified and indefensible. But, when
discussing this instance with a professor of taxonomy, he could not give any
adequate reason for placing them in different genera but at the same time,
he claimed that it was legitimate and that I ought to just take the
taxonomist's word for it.

If I was in your position WRT the finches, I would likely have just labelled
them as finches and been done with it, unless the kind of finch was
unambiguously clear. After all, does being able to call it a Zebra Blue
rather than just another finch add significantly to the value of the bird
that is greater than the cost of paying someone to do a thorough taxonomic
analysis? I guess, if someone wanted to pay me to do it, I would, but I
probably wouldn't pay someone else to do it.

Cheers,

Ted