Dear All, but especially Mark McDonough who is bewailing the Chlorogalum proposed change, In "Consider the Lilies" by Dean G. Kelch in the April 2002 issue of Fremontia, A Journal of the California Native Plant Society the California genera to be placed in the new Agavaceae are: Agave, Camassia, Chlorogalum, Hastingsia, Hesperocallis, Hesperoyucca, and Yucca. This is a bit mind boggling as we have desert-adapted plants and woodland plants sometimes growing in wet places thrown together. Kelch writes that desert-adapted plants like agaves could have evolved from a woodland herb like Hosta via some intermediate plant resembling hesperocallis or polianthes. He concludes: "Placing Hastingsia, Chlorogalum, and Camassia in the Agavaceae renders that family difficult to identify based on macroscopic characters. It is possible that further sampling will identify two related lineages: one a desert-adapted Agavaceae and another the forest-adapted Hostaceae (this name replaces the illegitimate Funkiaceae). If, as seems likely, these taxa are all hopelessly related, we may have to place them in one big, dysfunctional family. Until we develop a field lens powerful enough to count chromosomes, or invent a pocket DNA sequencer, this group may be hard to define based on field characters. However, all included species have a rosette of basal, often undulate leaves. The flowers are borne on a raceme or panicle, with bracts along its length and subtending the flowers. The petals are nearly free, generally being joined at the base." This last sentence is an example of what in the previous article it was predicted would be done, an attempt to make a definition for disparate specimens. I think the hard part for many of us is deciding what model to follow. Do you change your labels and go with something that cannot be easily detected by the naked eye or even a hand lens? I was having a discussion with a friend who is rewriting a book identifying local flora. She has always divided the book by families and was distressed about all the changes she'd have to make in the revision and was also wondering what the common names were for the new families since she had labeled the family names by their common names, not their scientific names, just as she describes the plants by their common names although in this case she adds the scientific name in small type below. I told her the public who uses her book looks at her drawings and pays little attention to the families and appreciates that she has divided it by color of the flowers. Most of the people who use the book aren't going to care if she has included a family name. But she still wants to arrange it in "the correct way." In the front of her book she has a key to the families and if she continues it in the revision I can see how she might struggle a bit to make everything fit. What are others in this group doing? Changing or holding out for the previous order? And please John Bryan if you respond to this, remove my message so it won't be included twice in the digest. Thanks. And does anyone know what the common name is for the new Themidaceae family that Mark is so fond of? Mary Sue