Re: Re: naming irises

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The goals of Plant Systematists (taxonomists ) and Horticulture are not the same. According to various codes, horticultural names are subservient to botanical names. The âpureâ sciences like to laud it over the applied sciences. I was there once myself. But I was also a gardener.  Horticulturalists created the term cultivar to note types of plants suitable for the garden. Botanists are interested that botanical names demonstrate evolutionary relationships. Unless one is studying speciation, the variations are largely ignored by many taxonomists. Despite the tools of forma, variety, and subspecies, much variation is simply taken for granted as not important in describing the phylogeny of the species.  But to gardeners a pure yellow form has a different place in the garden, from say a blue form, and even if the botanists chooses to ignore giving it a name, the gardener finds it essential in knowing what plants he has.

Because a gardener wants a plant true to certain characteristics he expects a name that honors those characters and does not change because the plant does not change.  On the other hand the botanist is assigning a name based on the current theory of how the plant evolved. Even though the plant does not change, the theory often does and requires that the plant be renamed to fit in the appropriate group.

 I once attended a lecture by one of the principal horticulturalists responsible for writing much of the code of nomenclature for cultivated plants. At his lecture he pointed out that a plant that fits the description of a cultivar, is that cultivar. I was shocked. I asked him to verify that if a cultivar is lost and someone repeats the cross and comes up with a plant fitting the description of that cultivar, it is now that cultivar. He affirmed that was the case.  As Irisarians we are so used to having clonal reproduction we assume a cultivar to always have the same genetic background. It was not long ago that I discovered that King Alfred daffodils are not the same plants of years ago, but new plants have replaced the old clones and but have the same description. Part of the take home message is one should describe cultivars very carefully.