Nice things to say, TY.
In another recent discussion on ATP, it was implied (in very polite terms, and genuinely helpful spirit that I admittedly paraphrase coarsely here to put it in the simplest terms) that I shouldn't care because I'm not a taxonomist, and don't really understand it anyway. Thoughts I'm sure most plant-o-philes have had, either in regard to self, or when reading the thoughts of others. The latter is absolutely true, I don't understand it fully, and have no education besides the self-sought kind. But my comprehension increases as I spend time "in" the subject, through books, searches, discussions, which I have been actively doing for about 30 years. It's always been very important to me to know the botanical names of my plants, as it is to many others.
If one frames the subject in regard to the ornamental and decorative uses of plants, it seems quite trivial, agreed. But the issue goes way beyond such minor uses of plants, into areas such as medicine, food, and toxicity. The rest of my post will address the issue of caring about binomial nomenclature, why I care, and why I think the issue is relevant and of importance to me, and to any person, to humanity.
Until geneticists involved themselves in binomial nomenclature of plants, AFAIK, they were only renamed if it was discovered that a same plant had been given more than 1 name. (Someone visiting a location in April, for example, would see plants in a quite different state than someone who visits in September.) So this has happened with many plants over the past 260 years, since Linnaeus invented his system. The name first published is given the status of preferred, with any names published later called synonyms. But! This isn't renaming a plant. It's reconciling a same plant with 2 names, one of which it was given by accident. Since a name works best if it is unique and stable, this is a necessary, positive, helpful, *good* thing to do.
Coleus in particular, a glaring example of renaming abuse/madness, whatever it was that happened. I think this one plant is an important lesson about the pitfalls of renaming plants. The one about the value of people's time. There are now pics of the same plant out there labeled as 3 different things, entries in databases, articles, books pamphlets, that are not all dynamic and will never all be reconciled with an explanation of what happened to the names - that they are all the same roses by a diff name, so to speak. It's mind boggling to try to imagine how many people have spent time on this confusion to date, and in the future, how much time they will spend on google, forums, - for this one simple plant - just trying to know what to call it - before pursuit about its' attributes can be investigated.
The obsoletion of books via publishing new names for same plants really bothers me. Plant names are the focus of publications from those about gardening to medical texts, everyone's very expensive copy of Hortus III, herbals, fiction, history, journals.
A name need only be unique and stable, to serve its' purpose. Once we know what a plant is, (which can only be done by giving it a name that no other plant has, that others also use to indicate that particular plant,) any particular knowledge sought about it can be reliably attached to the name. Many botanical epithets translate into someone's name, a color, an aspect of the plant such as fuzzy, reference to leaf shape. The notion of connecting genetics to binomial nomenclature is new, and the implications of doing it are not taken seriously enough, IMVHO/E.
There seems to be no stopping the idea that binomial nomenclature must somehow indicate some kind of genetic info, and/or be 'genetically correct,' so I hope whatever changes are made are indeed correct. I don't see any reason to connect the specific info called genetics to a plant name, and don't consider such renaming of plants to be progress (which implies a change for the *better*.)
When a name is changed, everyone using that name to attach knowledge to the plant now has a new field in their database for the 2nd name, and the possibility for info transfer fail is raised, and a certainty in general. Every plant lover who has a spreadsheet, every website with a database such as the excellent one here, every book previously published with the old name is now obsolete, people spend time arguing about which plant is in a picture because there's 2 names, and the 2 people may not know one is a synonym of another.
Were there a single place to reference such info, where botanists/taxonomists agreed about every name, it would be an easy thing to check. Unfortunately this isn't the case, as anyone who dabbles in binomial nomenclature knows well. Until geneticists got involved, the instability was minor, rarely something a dabbler would notice. But lately, it's pervasive, and something I notice almost daily, and on which I spend a lot of time, as I know others do. So it is definitely a concern of mine, whether I have all of the facts or not. Anyone who has read this far into this discussion is also probably spending time investigating plant names.
Native north American people had a name for every plant they had investigated (for edibility, medicinal purposes, suitability for so many uses,) that was unique and stable to that plant, making it easy to transfer any knowledge about it. When the Europeans came, they did not adopt all of the same names for plants, resulting in the loss of unknown quantities of facts about unknown number of plants. The potential loss to humanity from any instance of knowledge transfer failure could mean the difference between finding a cure for a disease, or not. Another extremely important area of lost knowledge of which I'm aware is in regard to pest management and companion planting. We no longer know how to produce food without chemicals, partially because knowledge like this failed to transfer across different names for same plants.
What are the financial implications? How many stores have lost sales because they told callers they didn't have any _____ (insert renamed plant of choice?)
These are my heartfelt sentiments to the cosmos in general, not as argument to anything said here, as someone who cares, and has fears about changing that which isn't broken for reasons that don't seem to be beneficial to anyone but the people doing it. Any research about a plant is good, beneficial. Losing any info because of confusion about a name is unacceptable.
