Re: SPU: New botanical Iris name

Interesting.  Agronomists tend to err on the side of whoever their major professor used as the name for a given plant.  And the most respected scientific journals will still let the name Agropyron elongatum be used for a decaploid wild relative of wheat about 5 feet tall that is native to the steppes of Asia, even though the name belongs to a diploid wild realative of wheat about 1 foot tall and is native to shorelines of the middle east. 
People have looked up who first screwed this up, and people have written articles about the error.  But is still used sometimes.
In this case, the convention is to give the chromosome number and provenence of the plant you are referring to.  
Both species have been moved to a different genus, so the missuse of the old names is being reduced.  And the missuse of the new names is less than that of the old names.
But the agronomists tend to be gardeners in their spare time, and even publish in the amature gardening magazines sometimes.  Not too often.  Some of them can't speak the language.
Walter

Robt R Pries <rpries@sbcglobal.net> wrote:
Anner: The trend in botany is to ignore the x names, Pure Science Botanists have often had a disdain for horticulture.
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