Re: Re: *germanica*

 

In theory botanist around the world tend to give the rank of species a certain weight that is applied across the board. Unfortunately this has not been true in Iris. The western botanist have rather glibly looked at Iris lutescens for example and said that the 40 chromosome species named by eastern or older botanist should all be considered the same species. Iris olbiensis and iris chamaeiris are now reduced to synonyms of lutescens. But using the same logic all the Louisiana species should be reduced to one species and all the pacific Coast natives should be reduced to one species. Although western botanist admit this is true they continue using the numbers of names because they say it serves the public. It seems ironic that we are willing to reduce to synonyms other times or culture?s species but unwilling to apply the same standards to our own. Personally I am happy with the multitude of names because significant variation would be ignored if we made so much synonymous.


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