Thanks for the explanation. It is the explanation that I expected. I don't imagine it would be any surprise that aficionados of many genera (other than semps/orostachys/jovibarba, and killifish) feel the same way - ?
I think it's completely appropriate that sites that are dedicated to semps/etc. would naturally want to catalogue the various forms of a species. However, my impression of this site has been that it prefers to follow the current nomenclatural standards, e.g. Catalogue of Life, wherever possible, and the current trend in these standards seems to be strongly towards "lumping", with various forms that were previously referred to as subspecies or varieties being subsumed into the next level up. Given that the site is not dedicated to particular genera - instead, it's a database of all species - I just don't get why the site would not be administered the same way for all genera, hence my question.
It doesn't frustrate me particularly if the decision is for this inconsistency to remain. I can certainly Iive with it. However, the following issue does concern me. For this provenance-based classification to be useful in this database, won't the administrators (or someone?) have to watch very carefully and ask a lot of questions about photos that people are posting to these entries, to make sure that the "generic"
Sempervivum arachnoideum purchased at the big box store doesn't get posted to the "
Sempervivum arachnoideum from Val Minera" entry?
This is why I asked the question earlier (which has not been answered): "There are plant photos posted to various of these entries, of what mainly appear to be garden plants. Should it be assumed that these plants (or seeds for them) were actually collected in the European areas indicated in the entries?"
Does someone actually monitor these entries to ensure that photos entered there are, at least, true to form (or, ideally, true both to form and to provenance)? It seems to me that if the entries for these careful classifications of form get corrupted by photos of plants that can't be traced back to any particular provenance, then it's counterproductive - not only would the info in this database not be accurate, but it would also be pumping out false information into the public record. (I note that the entry for this site comes up whenever I do a search on a plant species.)
Lori
