off-topic botanical question: Curious about shrubs as a gardening term
totototo@telus.net (Tue, 08 Jan 2008 10:47:45 PST)
On 7 Jan 08, at 7:30, John Grimshaw wrote:
The fact is that we do not possess a precise vocabulary for
distinguishing plants into growth-form categories and inevitably some
taxa are shoehorned into slots they do not deserve
The problem is that Mother Nature doesn't much care for discrete
categories with sharp dividing lines. She loves continua with lots of
gray areas, thereby driving the logically minded to a state of utter
despair.
There are some fairly sharply defined groups of plants, of course:
oaks and cyclamen being 2 examples. But not everything is so
straightforward.
These inevitable gray areas and ambiguities are something for
newcomers to the Exciting World of Botanical Nomenclature to keep in
mind, by the way. They even appertain to categories of categories
such as "family" and "genus".
--
Rodger Whitlock
Victoria, British Columbia, Canada
Maritime Zone 8, a cool Mediterranean climate
on beautiful Vancouver Island