On 6 Jul 05 at 18:29, boutin wrote: > ...Should molecular evidence trump floral form? Give that man a prize for enunciating the $64,000 question. The whole point of taxonomy is to identify plants. If you can't make the identification without carrying DNA analysis equipment in your backpack, somehow it seems rather counterproductive. At issue is the opinion of some (many?) botanists that the taxonomic hierarchy should match the evolutionary hierarchy. However, this position leads to stupid anomalies when both a parent (ancestral) species and one of it's children (descendant species) are still with us, no matter how distinctive they may be. The thing to keep in mind is that taxonomic naming is *opinion*, that as long as a name was validly published, you are free to reject later shufflings and keep on using it. In this case, it sounds like it might not be a bad idea to keep using drimiopsis as well as ledebouria, with footnotes reminding the unwary that *some* botanists think the one should be submerged into the other. I wonder if it wouldn't be a more useful strategy in cases like this to leave the establish genera alone and erect a "super-genus." -- Rodger Whitlock Victoria, British Columbia, Canada Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate on beautiful Vancouver Island