Very well and thoroughly stated, Jim. Would that our politicians were so thoughtful and educated in their disciplines. Cheers. You're a good model for me. . But then, there are fewer rules out there for interchange in those other disciplines, away from horticulture and botany, and they're also not yet agreed on, or established over time. . Because this is a gardening list, we routinely commit the sin of omitting the names of the authors of botanical names and the date of publication of such names. And because this is a gardening list, I wouldn't want it any other way. However, this little flap we're having over the name of Lilium leichtlinii is a good example of the occasionally confusing (contentious?) results of that laissez faire attitude. In a technical paper the use of authors' names and dates of publication will go a long way to preventing the confusion. In an informal setting such as this list, we're often left to guess what people mean. I am always perplexed when someone takes personally a vigorous rebuttal to something they have posted. My point of view is that it comes with the territory: there are limitations on how we can express ourselves on this list, limitations which sometimes introduce their own problems. The failure to cite authors and dates is one (but I'm certainly not advocating that we adopt that practice). Another is that italics are not available on this list. There are many name-formatting issues which I would like to discuss on this list, but I've avoided these because we can't use italics. Without italics, any such discussions would be unintelligible or very clumsy - and that would no doubt add fuel to an already potentially inflammable topic. These niceties exist and are appreciated in other, more formal venues simply because they make it easier for us to say what we mean in an efficient way; they make it easy for the reader to understand what we mean on first reading.