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Questions and Answers: 2013

Question: Thank you for that detailed answer! I have Flora Nova Angliae (an awesome resource) and just read more details. I …

• Question

  Thank you for that detailed answer! I have Flora Nova Angliae (an awesome resource) and just read more details. I have a follow-up question. Is this an official change? What group officially makes these decisions? How is the change implemented and the knowledge of the change disseminated?

  Answer

  Lena, there is no group who makes decisions about what rank to recognize taxa at. In this case, the question is: do we recognize the groups of dogwoods as genera (i.e., multiple genera) or as subgenera (i.e., as one genus). What occurs is various authors make their arguments and the botanical community decides whether it will follow said arguments (or not). Unfortunately, many things interfere with the advancement of well-supported taxonomies, including taxonomic inertia (resistance to change) and poor understanding of systematics. In regard to Cornus, arguments that apply to other genera that have been split in recent years (e.g., Lycopodium, Aster, Scirpus) also, in large part, apply to Cornus. They are very different groups and sort well world-wide. However, it will be years before some people "accept" this change, for no other reason than it requires them to learn a new generic scheme (i.e., it is easier to simply call them all Cornus). Unfortunately, this approach does not take into account what we know about this group's morphology, phylogeny, phenology, phytogeography, and physiology. Changes like this are disseminated through papers, floras, classes, etc. So, it takes time for this kind of information to spread, resulting in people using completely different naming systems in different communities. Best wishes.