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Feb. 26, 2007 About 3 or 4 years ago, I drew up my latest tables of plants and animals, in conjunction with my book on linguistics. What I was aiming at was a list of all the common names of plants and animals in alphabetical order, each entry showing the entire taxonomical pedigree, Generally, this information was hard to find at the time. Now you can usually get the information from Wikipedia, but in the past, you had to be something of a botanical Sherlock Holmes to find all the information. For example, take potatoes. They were in the kingdom Plantae, division Magnoliophyta, class Magnoliopsida, order Solanales, family Solanaceae, genus Solanum, species tuberosum. So I wanted my listing to look like this. Potatoes...Plantae, Magnoliophyta, Magnoliopsida, Solanales, Solanaceae, Solanum tuberosum In other words, I needed a list of 7 items for each of about 300 to 400 plants, and as many if not more animals. In this article I'm dealing only with plants. I'll deal with animals some other time maybe. The Cronquist System of plant taxonomy was widely adopted when in came out in 1981. Throughout the 90's I referred to it again and again. It was included in its entirety in Encyclopedia Britannica, which, unfortunately, however, took it down only to the level of family in the above scheme, leaving the interested party to hunt for himself or herself to locate genera and species. This was a really time-consuming procedure for me, taking half an hour per plant, as I cross-referenced encyclopedias, dictionaries and botany textbooks. Then in 1998, the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG)published an entire restructuring of the classification of plants, based on genomic research. However, there was a lag between their publication and its actual appearance in encyclopedias and websites. So when I began composing my latest set of tables, in 2001-2003, I was hardly aware of the APG. Then APG updated its new scheme with its newer APG II. Now finally APG II is beginning to supplant Cronquist on all the websites devoted to botanical nomenclature, including Wikipedia. But this amounts to an explosion in the flower shop. Whole orders and families have been removed, others have been created. Within orders, families have been shifted about mercilessly. APG II has torn Cronquist's work to shreds. I'm glad that he is dead. If he were stil alive, he'd die of a heart attack. For example, the order Liliales, which originally included lilies, tulips, irises, onions, agave, aloes, asparagus, smilax and many, many other beautiful and useful plants, consisted of 15 families. Of these only 2 remain: Liliaceae and Smilacaceae. The other 13 have been scattered in four different orders. The families Agavaceae, Aloeaceae, Cyanastraceae, Iridaceae and Xanthorrhoeaceae have been moved into a newly created order called Asparagales. Dioscoreaceae and Taccaceae have been placed in another new order, Dioscoreales. Haemodoraceae, Hanguanaceae, Philydraceae and Pontederiaceae have been transferred to the extant order Commelinales. Families Stemonaceae and Velloziaceae have been placed in another extant order, Pandanales. But don't think that Liliaceae and Smilacaceae are lonesome in their evacuated order, for eight new families have been added to Liliales, namely, Alstroemeriaceae. Campynemataceae, Colchiaceae, Corsiaceae, Luzuriagaceae. Melanthiaceae, Philesiaceae, Rhipogonaceae. So far, the only one that I've been able to trace is Corsiaceae, which was imported from the order Orchidales, now defunct. Orchids are now in Asparagales. As for the seven other new families, it's quite likely that they are individual genera or species that have been upgraded to the rank of 'family', because of their uniqueness. Earlier they may have been lumped in other families. Rosales, the order that included roses, apples, plums, almonds, peaches, apricots and many other beautiful plants, have been ripped to shreds. Violales, with violets, begonias, melons, cucumbers and other plants, are now a disaster area. Grains, which were in Cyperales, are now in Poales. So wheat, corn, oats, rye, rice, barley and millet have been regrouped, and pineapples, cattails and rushes have been classified as grasses. The real rub is that the wholesale butchery of the Cronquist system casts a lot of doubt on the validity of these scientific constructs. How long will it be until somebody maims APG II? It would be great to have a hard name for each species of plants, independent of botanical innovations,fads and fashions. When all is said and done, the scientific name of a plant is virtually worthless. It tells you nothing and is subject to change without notice. Scientific names hardly constitute an improvement over common names. An orchid was an orchid was an orchid. Now it's an asparagus. A rose is a rose is a rose today, but what about tomorrow? What's more, the cumbersome names that are in vogue are by no means necessary. This is all pedantry and nonsense. There's absolutely no reason in the world why Potamogetonaceae and Alseuosmiaceae might not have been Potix and Alsix, for example, with a rule that names of families always end in 'x'. Who cares about etymological purity? Give us a pronounceable word instead. ------------ About the author Thomas Keyes: I have written two books: A SOJOURN IN ASIA (non-fiction) and A TALE OF UNG (fiction), neither published so far. I have studied languages for years and traveled extensively on five continents. Email: udikeyes@yahoo.com Comment on this article here! ------------ All articles are EXCLUSIVE to Useless-Knowledge.com and are not allowed to be posted on other websites. ARTICLE THIEVES WILL BE PROSECUTED! |
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