In message , Nick Maclaren
writes

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

Only some of the old names are valid. Botanists standardised the names
of higher taxa as being based on a genus (not necessarily a currently
excepted genus - hence Caryophyllaceae and Theaceae), with standardised
terminations, such as -aceae for families (beforehand you'd have forms
such as Berberideae, rather than Berberidaceae), and grandfathered in a
few widely used descriptive family names - Gramineae, Legumiosae,
Compositae, Cruciferae, Guttiferae, Umbelliferae, Labiatae, Compositae,
Palmae and Papilionaceae/Papilionoideae. Other such names, such as
Columniferae (Malvaceae) or Culmineae (Tiliaceae?) aren't valid.

I seem to recall that there is a proposal to remove the remaining
descriptive family names, as they are now rarely used in botanical
works, except for Palmae. (They're is a proposal to allow Palmaceae, as
Arecaceae is a bit similar to Araceae.)

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.


I would have thought that changes of family names followed more from
changes to classification than to following the rules of the ICBN. For
example the names you give for Leguminosae are all alternatives, but
follow from disagreement as to whether to consider the clade one family
or three.

For an example as to how classification has changed over history, I've
put together part of the story for Malvaceae

http://www.malvaceae.info/Classification/history.html

Theobroma (cacao), for example, has been in Tiliaceae, Malvaceae,
Byttneriaceae (aka Buettneriaceae), Theobromaceae (aka Theobromataceae)
and Sterculiaceae.

Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

In message , Des Higgins
writes

"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.

I know that Chrysanthemum got chopped into pieces sometime back, with
the florists chyrsanthemums going to Dendranthema, and Chrysanthemum
being restricted to a few Mediterranean annuals, but I was a bit
surprised recently to see crown daisies given as Ismelia carinata -
what's left in Chrysanthemum other than corn marigold?


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.



--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

In message , Sacha
writes
On 4/3/07 14:34, in article lid, "Stewart Robert
Hinsley" wrote:

In message , K
writes
The system is based on the flowers, since they are the bit that enables
sexual reproduction and therefore govern the ancestral 'tree' of the
plant in question.

Actually the classification is ideally based on "total evidence",
whether flower and fruit morphology, or vegetative morphology, or pollen
morphology, or ctyology, or biochemistry, or DNA sequences. Flower and
fruit morphology does however usually offer a better guide to
relationships that other easily examined characters.

(Note that the system also applies to non-flowering plants like mosses,
ferns and conifers. A similar system, growing from the same root,
applies to animals.)

Back in the 18th century Linnaeus ("The Father of Botany") introduced
both the binomial naming scheme which is the root of the modern
International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN), and an artificial
(i.e. not based on relationships) classification based on the numbers of
stamens and pistils. He also produced an outline of a natural (one based
on relationships, as far as he could deduce) classification

Very interesting but not easy for the beginner, IMO!


It didn't think I was going into particularly abstruse territory, but
it's hard to remember back to the days when the boundaries of my
ignorance were smaller. (The more you learn the more you realise that
you don't know.)

But for a learning experience, what is wanted is not easy material, but
(sufficiently) challenging material. Readers can always ask for
clarification, if they're interested.
--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

In message , Nick Maclaren
writes

In article ,
Stewart Robert Hinsley writes:
|
| Back in the 18th century Linnaeus ("The Father of Botany") introduced
| both the binomial naming scheme which is the root of the modern
| International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN), and an artificial
| (i.e. not based on relationships) classification based on the numbers of
| stamens and pistils. He also produced an outline of a natural (one based
| on relationships, as far as he could deduce) classification

Which was and is quite incredible, being largely valid today.

Do you have a citation for Linnaeus' natural classification? - If I
recall correctly all I've seen was a sketch in Lindley's "Vegetable
Kingdom". Adanson's "Familles des Plants" and Jussieu's "Genera
Plantarum" do have a fairly modern aspect, so I'd guess that Linnaeus'
work would be similar, but I haven't seen it in any detail.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

--
Stewart Robert Hinsley

"Stewart Robert Hinsley" wrote in message
...
In message , Des Higgins
writes

"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.

I know that Chrysanthemum got chopped into pieces sometime back, with the
florists chyrsanthemums going to Dendranthema, and Chrysanthemum being
restricted to a few Mediterranean annuals, but I was a bit surprised
recently to see crown daisies given as Ismelia carinata - what's left in
Chrysanthemum other than corn marigold?

It is very hard to live in a world with fewer and fewer chrysanthemums every
week.
Helping yer grany with her Dendranths does not have the same ring to it.
And the survivors: Corn marigold seems rare these days, at least in Ireland.
I have not seen a corn field coloured bright yellow by the things in years.

On 4/3/07 16:06, in article , "Stewart Robert
Hinsley" wrote:

In message , Sacha
writes
On 4/3/07 14:34, in article lid, "Stewart Robert
Hinsley" wrote:

In message , K
writes
The system is based on the flowers, since they are the bit that enables
sexual reproduction and therefore govern the ancestral 'tree' of the
plant in question.

Actually the classification is ideally based on "total evidence",
whether flower and fruit morphology, or vegetative morphology, or pollen
morphology, or ctyology, or biochemistry, or DNA sequences. Flower and
fruit morphology does however usually offer a better guide to
relationships that other easily examined characters.

(Note that the system also applies to non-flowering plants like mosses,
ferns and conifers. A similar system, growing from the same root,
applies to animals.)

Back in the 18th century Linnaeus ("The Father of Botany") introduced
both the binomial naming scheme which is the root of the modern
International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN), and an artificial
(i.e. not based on relationships) classification based on the numbers of
stamens and pistils. He also produced an outline of a natural (one based
on relationships, as far as he could deduce) classification

Very interesting but not easy for the beginner, IMO!


It didn't think I was going into particularly abstruse territory, but
it's hard to remember back to the days when the boundaries of my
ignorance were smaller. (The more you learn the more you realise that
you don't know.)

But for a learning experience, what is wanted is not easy material, but
(sufficiently) challenging material. Readers can always ask for
clarification, if they're interested.

I thought that first reader did - sort of - ask for clarification. In the
beginning - sorry to sound Biblical - if you one can just get the actual
Latin name by which a plant is known that is quite enough, IMO. It enables
you to order a plant, discuss it with others in this country or other
countries and know what you've got if you want to look it up on e.g. Google
or the Plant Finder. The far distant lunar light years away from most
gardeners, botanical particulars are, I'm sure extremely interesting to
those of that turn of mind but they are absolutely not essential to the
average gardener who simply wants to ID a plant he's read about under its
common name in South Africa, Staffordshire or South Molton. ;-)
That said, I salute your knowledge but can never say that we have had even
ONE customer here ask such questions before buying e.g. Pulmonaria 'Blue
Ensign'! OTOH, we have had customers asking for Lungwort...... ;-)

--
Sacha
http://www.hillhousenursery.co.uk
South Devon
http://www.discoverdartmoor.co.uk/
(remove weeds from address)

In article ,
Stewart Robert Hinsley writes:
|
| But don't trust them too far - and ESPECIALLY never trust ones that
| indicate a geographic origin. They are more reliable than English
| names, but not wholly reliable, and ones that imply a location are
| misleading as often as not.
|
| For example, I'm told that the Cuban Lily, Scilla peruviana, is a
| Mediterranean plant.

Well, that would make it misleading in only one word, rather than both
for the English :-)


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In article ,
Stewart Robert Hinsley writes:
|
| Only some of the old names are valid. Botanists standardised the names
| of higher taxa as being based on a genus (not necessarily a currently
| excepted genus - hence Caryophyllaceae and Theaceae), with standardised
| terminations, such as -aceae for families (beforehand you'd have forms
| such as Berberideae, rather than Berberidaceae), and grandfathered in a
| few widely used descriptive family names - Gramineae, Legumiosae,
| Compositae, Cruciferae, Guttiferae, Umbelliferae, Labiatae, Compositae,
| Palmae and Papilionaceae/Papilionoideae. Other such names, such as
| Columniferae (Malvaceae) or Culmineae (Tiliaceae?) aren't valid.

Ah. Thanks for the correction. What I (and many others) object to
isn't those rules, which are as sensible as many others, but (a) NOT
using those established names with standardised endings and (b) often
requiring changes when indicative genera are abolished or moved.

| I seem to recall that there is a proposal to remove the remaining
| descriptive family names, as they are now rarely used in botanical
| works, except for Palmae. (They're is a proposal to allow Palmaceae, as
| Arecaceae is a bit similar to Araceae.)

Oh, God :-(

Legumiosae about 2,000,000
Fabaceae about 2,820,000

Labiatae about 740,000
Lamiaceae about 828,000

Umbelliferae about 463,000
Apiaceae about 606,000

As with Viburnum fragrans, the confusion caused by that will take many
decades to die away.

| I would have thought that changes of family names followed more from
| changes to classification than to following the rules of the ICBN. For
| example the names you give for Leguminosae are all alternatives, but
| follow from disagreement as to whether to consider the clade one family
| or three.

They do but, in cases such as that, the rules are such that relatively
localised reclassifications cause disruption far beyond the area of the
change. That is a great advantage of the old descriptive names; not
being tied to a genus, there is no need to change them just because one
genus gets moved.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In article ,
Stewart Robert Hinsley writes:
|
| Do you have a citation for Linnaeus' natural classification? - If I
| recall correctly all I've seen was a sketch in Lindley's "Vegetable
| Kingdom". Adanson's "Familles des Plants" and Jussieu's "Genera
| Plantarum" do have a fairly modern aspect, so I'd guess that Linnaeus'
| work would be similar, but I haven't seen it in any detail.

Sorry, no, though I could find one if you have trouble. I couldn't
read it, anyway, because my Latin is little better than my Swedish.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

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!
--
Kay

Nick Maclaren writes

In article ,
Stewart Robert Hinsley writes:
|
| But don't trust them too far - and ESPECIALLY never trust ones that
| indicate a geographic origin. They are more reliable than English
| names, but not wholly reliable, and ones that imply a location are
| misleading as often as not.
|
| For example, I'm told that the Cuban Lily, Scilla peruviana, is a
| Mediterranean plant.

Well, that would make it misleading in only one word, rather than both
for the English :-)

We've just returned from a holiday in Portugal, having spent the last
evening talking plants with the restaurateur. For many of the plants, he
was able to use only the portuguese common names, which in many cases
are nothing like the english - if we'd both been using the latin, it
would have been easier.
--
Kay

On 4 Mar, 17:19, K wrote:
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!

I had jumped when I heard that the London Plane's DNA were closer to
the Lotus flowers than any British trees.

We're all made of stars, as well.

In article ,
"Des Higgins" writes:
|
| 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?"

It makes searching diabolically difficult, to be sure. You need to know
the complete history of the names to be able to unpick references, or
even to find all of the references you are looking for.

| 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.

That comparison has been made by many people far more eminent than we
are :-)

Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

In article .com,
"La Puce" writes:
| On 4 Mar, 17:19, K wrote:
|
| 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!
|
| I had jumped when I heard that the London Plane's DNA were closer to
| the Lotus flowers than any British trees.

Well, maybe. I have chased up a few such claims, and I have generally
been disgusted with the academic standard of the papers. Almost all
have based their categorisations on a small subset of characteristics,
and have not justified their choice. A great many of them have happily
quoted analyses that demonstrated two incompatible classifications,
each with 90% probability of being right!

There was an interesting paper I saw when I was working on theoretical
taxonomy (40 years ago, so don't ask for a reference!) that showed that
you could get almost arbitrary, 'significant' classifications from a
random, homogeneous collection of data if you had enough dimensions.
I convinced myself that, with more measurements than items, you would
inevitably get some subsets that produced totally bogus, but highly
'significant' classifications.

And, with DNA data, you are talking tens of thousands of genes, and
hundreds of millions of codons, at least. So my advice is NOT to
believe any such claims (nor to disbelieve them), until they have been
established wisdom for at least 3-4 decades.

| We're all made of stars, as well.

Well, that too. But don't get me started on cosmology - it makes
Swift look positively understated.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.

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