In message , K
writes
Des Higgins writes
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 really frightens me is the whole DNA stuff. The few results I have
seen reported of that seem to overturn everything I have learnt. Since
I am older and grumpier than you, I am strongly tempted just to ignore
the whole thing!

Possibly it is the case that the more revolutionary results are the ones
which get more publicity outside the academic literature. For example,
Scrophulariaceae has been dismembered. (There's an ongoing argument as
to whether to use Plantaginaceae or Veronicaceae for one of the
fragments; the rules say Plantaginaceae, but to follow them would lead
to confusion between the old, narrow, and the new, broad,
Plantaginaceae.)

Another change is to merge Malvaceae, Bombacaceae, Sterculiaceae and
Tiliaceae into Malvaceae. But it was always recognised that these were
closely related families, and that the boundaries, especially between
Sterculiaceae and Tiliaceae were ill-defined.

Also, for at least some of the DNA results, there were non-DNA
precursors in the literature, even if they hadn't permeated into the
popular consciousness.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley