"Nick Maclaren" wrote in message
...

In article ,
K writes:
|
| Speaking as an amateur, start by learning about families and genera.
| It's made easier by families being given names ending with 'aceae' - so
| Rosa is the genus, Rosaceae the family (which includes other genera
such
| as Malus (apples), Pyrus (pears), Sorbus - rowans and whitebeams)
|
| Carrots, parsnips, fennel, dill, parsley are all in the umbellifer
| family, which appears now to be called Apiaceae. Many of our other
herbs
| - mint, marjoram, oregano, savory - are Lamiaceae, named after the
genus
| Lamium which includes the silver leaved dead nettle used as a ground
| cover in gardens.

Unfortunately, quite a lot of the family names have been created by the
rabid renamers - Apiaceae and Lamiaceae are two - and many/most books
use the old names (try Umbelliferae and Labiatae). There didn't seem
to be any reason for that except dogma, and the old names were often
usefully descriptive (as in those cases).

You can get a fright if you open a "modern" text book alright and see a load
of family names that look kind of familiar and recognisable (like Poaceae
and Lamiaceae like you mention above or Papilionaceae like below) but it
does seem like endless tinkering. It makes me feel like a grumpy old man
and I am only 47.
Taxonomists claim that nomenclature is important (which it is) to help
organise knowledge but it becomes self defeating if it remains permanently
unstable. Users (e.g. gardeners or field botanists) become cynical and
start saying things like:
"x belongs to the yaceae, for this week at any rate"
or
"anyone know what family z belongs to this week?"
As for cladists of different religious hues and their interminable wars, I
am reminded of Swift and the war between the bigendians and littlendians.
Making perfect compost is simple in comparison.


What is more, the old rules
still seem to be valid, unlike for genera and species, so you have to
learn two schemes :-(

If I recall, some family names have changed half a dozen times, as the
rigid application of the rules dictated, but I don't think that many
of those have impacted most gardeners. Except for the Leguminosae
(a.k.a. Fabaceae a.k.a. Papilionaceae a.k.a. Caesalpiniaceae?), which
I have seen cause considerable confusion.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.