The Plant List

[Stephenb]

The Plant List is complete!

http://www.theplantlist.org
http://www.kew.org/news/plant-list-complete.htm

[David Nicholson]

...... and with lots of surprises and head scratching for non-Botanists and Taxonomists reading it I suppose. I found that Lewisia are now in the family Montiaceae and not Portulacaceae as I have always known them 

[Great Moravian]

It is a totally stupid idea. There are no generally accepted names of plants. Botany is namely a science,
its results are therefore ephemeral, subjective and relative. The lists-producing clerks should do
anything useful, for example charity, and not interfere in a field reserved for scientists.

[David Nicholson]

So, Great Moravian, are you saying that gardening and gardeners have no place in "Science"? Surely gardeners need to know what it is they are growing so that they can either take up , or ignore, as the case may be, what the Scientists are saying? I doubt that your title of "list producing clerks" is an adequate one for the probably very highly qualified people who will have worked on this project.

[Great Moravian]

The principle of making lists of accepted names contradicts basic principles of scientific thinking.
So the project is absurd in its foundations.
Furthermore, I checked the information there for several genera. Terrible.

[David Nicholson]

I really can't believe that two very august horticultural and scientific bodies would spend scarce resources in terms of time and human resource to conduct a project that "contradicts basic principles of scientific thinking" and "absurd in its foundations"

I don't doubt there will be sufficient room in the material published for argument and further discussion. I hope you will be putting your views forward to contribute to this.

[Gerry Webster]

Botany is namely a science, its results are therefore ephemeral, subjective and relative.

A curious view of science.

The principle of making lists of accepted names contradicts basic principles of scientific thinking.
So the project is absurd in its foundations.
Furthermore, I checked the information there for several genera. Terrible.

What are these "basic principles of scientific thinking"?

[Casalima]

It is also to be noted that this is, in their own words, a "working list", using "working" with the following meaning, I would imagine:

working
• adjective
3. (of a theory, definition, or title) used as the basis for work or argument and likely to be developed or improved later: his working title for the book was Why People Are Poor.
(Online Oxford Dictionary of English)

[Lesley Cox]

I plan to keep well out of this discussion but will follow it with great interest as it develops.

[gote]

It is a totally stupid idea. There are no generally accepted names of plants. Botany is namely a science,
its results are therefore ephemeral, subjective and relative. The lists-producing clerks should do
anything useful, for example charity, and not interfere in a field reserved for scientists.

I would be highly interested in why the staff of Kew Botanical Garden and Misouri Botanical Garden are clerks and not scientists. I woudl have assumed that they were mostly people with academic degrees in botany. Please educate me!

Also please educate me as to why there are no generally accepted names. I would have believed that this is something we have had since 1753.

In humble appreciation
Göte

PS
I recall that you have given valuable information of taxonomic nature in the past. Do you sincerely mean that your info was generally unacceptable??
 

[Great Moravian]

I shall try to explain the problem to you.
There exists an obligatory basic document containing concepts an rules concerning plant names.
http://www.ibot.sav.sk/icbn/main.htm
Accepted names are not concepts of the document above.
There exist two important and useful lists of plant names which I use extensively.
One is the index of published names gradually becoming a source of information
about validity and legitimity of names. It is maintained on a scientific basis.
http://www.ipni.org/
The other is  Global Plant Checklist in which you can obtain information about names accepted=used by different authors.
No authoritative decision is contained in  Global Plant Checklist and it is a valuable source of information of scientific nature.
http://www.bgbm.fu-berlin.de/IOPI/GPC/PTaxonDetail.asp?NameCache=Pulsatilla%20alpina%20subsp.%20alba&PTRefFk=
Lists of accepted names without reference to the person by which being accepted are non-scientific nonsense.

[Gerry Webster]

You continue to refer to science or "scientific" without giving us any idea as to what we are to understand by the term(s).

[Olga Bondareva]

I plan to keep well out of this discussion but will follow it with great interest as it develops.

+1
Unexpected Great Moravians comment makes the discussion very interesting

[Martin Baxendale]

Isn't the thing to bear in mind here that this plant list is just intended as a (fairly basic) tool for use in global plant conservation efforts. It doesn't seem to be intended to be a major piece of ground-breaking scientific research, more a simple collation of available information in a very easily understood and accessible (even "populist") form that can be used by people in many walks of life who are not necessarily botanical or horticultural experts. It is by its very nature a blunt tool and far from perfect (whatever that might mean). The question I'd ask is: as a basic tool will it do the job, will it help with plant conservation? I suppose there's a general argument to be made that you can't work on a problem (e.g. plant extinctions) until you have all the available starting point information - in this case, we need to know what we have before we can start to protect it. And I guess the thinking is that there are so many different human activities affecting plant extinctions that the basic information needs to be in a form that is as accessible as possible to lots of people with minimal specialist knowledge. I have no idea how useful it will be. But I assume botanical specialists decided it would be useful. If I don't assume that, then I have to assume it was simply devised to provide them with paid work. I'm a cynic by nature, but I'd like to think it's the first one.

[Martin Baxendale]

Like Lesley and Olga, my instincts told me to stay out of this morass. Why do I never listen to my instincts?!