New Zealand field trips April 2010

[t00lie]

Afraid so Dave. You had better change all your gentian picture captions to Gentianella or someone will pull you up on it when you give your talk in Scotland .

David

On a wider aspect that may happen and ,(not trying to be too flipant), if it does ,my thoughts are that birds will still be singing and the sun shining   . Well ....hopefully there will be a bit of sunshine in Scotland in early October    .

Lesley
Thanks for your concern --not well enough to work today --in any case it's raining steadily at the moment and i wasn't really looking forward to 7 hours of manually cutting a hedge...although obviously that has only been put off for a day or two.

Cheers Dave.

[Lesley Cox]

Raining steadily eh? We've had 3 drops last night and 2 more this morning before it gave up altogether. The footpaths were wetted twice but not much else.

[Ross Graham]

Just a tease really as I dont have time to edit and put up a lot of pics.

On the subject of names its perfectly acceptable to use an older name as long as you cite which authority is being used. Seeing as none of us really state which authority we are using with each name I think its fine to use which ever name the most number of people know. Just because some taxonimist changes the names all the time doesnt mean we have to accept them. This is a gardening forum after all.

By the way the photo is of Hasstia pulvinaris var. minor Lang
Lang is the authority
April has been a much better month for getting out and about.

[David Lyttle]

On the subject of names its perfectly acceptable to use an older name as long as you cite which authority is being used. Seeing as none of us really state which authority we are using with each name I think its fine to use which ever name the most number of people know. Just because some taxonimist changes the names all the time doesnt mean we have to accept them. This is a gardening forum after all.
By the way the photo is of Hasstia pulvinaris var. minor Lang

You are correct of course Ross. However you have done a disservice to these esteemed gentlemen as you have spelt both their names incorrectly; it is Haastia pulvinaris var minor Laing .

The naming of plants follows some rather complicated legalistic rules; names are assigned to a type specimen which should be deposited in a herbarium so any subsequent investigator knows what Laing had in mind when he named the plant. The plant needs to be formally described in Latin, and the description along with other supporting material needs to be published. (these days often as a comprehensive paper in a refereed scientific journal) The first validly published name takes precedence over any subsequent names. So when names are changed it is not necessarily done on a whim by some taxonomist.  In the Linnean system, names imply relationships and it is the ongoing investigation of the relationships amongst the plants in question that lead to the assigning of new names. For example in her recent revision of the genus Meudt reduced Chionohebe myosotoides (Ashwin) B.G. Briggs and Ehrend to a synonym of Veronica thomsonii (Buchanan) Cheeseman as she could find no differences to justify retaining as a separate species . Ashwin had originally described this species from the Pisa Range in 1961 and placed it in the genus Pygmea.  In 1976 Briggs and Ehrendorfer erected the new genus Chionohebe to accommodate it and  the other snow hebes. Meudt  choose to follow Garnock-Jones et al and return all Chionohebes to the genus Veronica. I am happy that Chionohebe myosotoides is now gone as I was never able to find plants that differed from Chionohebe thomsonii on the Pisa Range where the type specimen came from. However like many other New Zealand botanists I prefer to retain the genus Hebe and Chionohebe so I will refer to it as Chionohebe thomsonii (Buchanan) Briggs and Ehrend. This still leaves some problems round the edges; the Northern hemisphere botanists need to sort out their own Veronica species as the genus can no longer be considered monophyletic if Hebe is excluded. Chionohebe densifolia (F Muell) B.G. Briggs and Ehrend does not fit well into Chionohebe and if we choose take this view and not to use the name Veronica and we must accept the treatment of Heads and call this latter species Hebejeebie densifolia (F Muell) Heads.  (sometimes we need to swallow dead rats)

So what is in a name? A botanical name reflects our understanding of the plant that we are interested in and its relationships to other plants. Over time as we gain new knowledge these understandings will change. Whether we accept or reject a name will depend on our knowledge and understanding of the plants we are interested in.                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                    

[Lesley Cox]

Lang Lang (even if on two lines ) is an absolutely brilliant Chinese classical pianist.

(I'd never dare suggest that Linnean should be spelt as Linnaean. )

[Ross Graham]

Well Im sure you are right and as I said I was posting in a hurry.
 I rarely post in here because even though I think that people might like to see some pictures  of nice plants in interesting environments the only comments I ever recieve are that Im wrong in some way or form. Im mildly dislexic and its quite hard for my to get letters in the right place when I copy them. Iv posted on other simmilar forums and they seem to be more inclusive and tolerant.

[Maggi Young]

Don't take offence, Ross..... it is just that it is better for search engines finding references to plants if the spelling is correct and for the botanists among us it is their main focus! There are plenty of us here who are not so hot at spelling, whether because we're dyslexic, like Ian Young or lousy typists, like me 

It is possible to see corrections being made to folks all through the forum but it is all meant for the best and not as a personal criticism at all, I promise you. Take a leaf out of Ian's book and be glad of the help..... otherwise it would look like he's writing in some ancinet forgotten language!

It's great to enjoy your posts and I hope you continue.

[David Lyttle]

Ross,

I am sorry, no offense was intended. Perhaps I have spent too much time in teaching situations evaluating presentations that criticism and correction has become a habit. You are welcome to counter my opinions with your own.

The point of my last posting to this thread was that to accommodate new knowledge from time to time taxonomy needs to change. The example I gave serves to illustrate that this process is not always straight forward and in some instances can be quite contentious.

[Ross Graham]

Well Im not your student David. I spent 4 years learning Botany and learnt alot every day I was there. I just think that if someone spends 2 hours editing and posting some photos that it would be nice to actually get some acknoledgment of the effort involved other than you spelt that wrong and that name is wrong. If Im put off by this, I imagine other people may be compleatly put off posting. Maggie: Im happy you correct my spelling for the search engines you usually do it without making me look an idiot by just editing the post quitly in the background.
I feel that there are better ways to get respect than by embarrasing people and puttting them off. For me Botany is a joy and fun. Its the same kind of feeling I imagine my 15 month daughter gets when she sees an unusual plant and solemenly says prettttty. Every time I post on here Im just trying to share my enthusiasm for plants Im not presenting a paper at a symposium. Im first and formost a gardener and a plant hunter and if you dont like that maybe you should avoid my posts. I have visited many interesting places in the last couple of months and I have not posted because I thought I would get jumped on for every minor mistake. So who misses out?
 I know that plant names change and I know why  but I sometimes think its easier if everyone knows what plant you are talking about rather than being correct and being the only one that knows.
Alpines should be fun and if everyone said 5 positive things for every negative the world would be in a better state than today.

[Lesley Cox]

Ross, we really WOULD like to see your pictures, especially an old lady like myself whose arthritic back and knees have just about stopped all mountain trips now. So please do continue to post them if you can.