Donnie, I'm not a practicing taxonomist, but until we hear from one, let me hazard an answer. In fact, I've discussed this informally with taxonomists in the past. The short answer for situations such as the one you described is that the population in question is often treated as a species. The plant we call Fritillaria eastwoodiae provides a good example. It varies throughout its range, in some areas tending towards one purported parent, in other areas tending towards the other purported parent. And it is widely regarded as a "good" species. But the situation is not always so simple. In southwestern Virginia, Lilium grayi seems to be in a species-like relationship with local populations of Lilium canadense. Elsewhere in its range, Lilium grayi grows in relative isolation and seems relatively distinct. Lilium canadense in other parts of its range is distinct. But there is an area where the two nominally different species behave as a single species. Most taxonomists are reluctant to combine the two species (although I’ve read that Asa Gray himself had doubts that the lily named for him was specifically distinct). But there is more to the story. I don't think there is a simple answer to this question, in part because it addresses directly points over which taxonomists differ: what is the significance of hybrids, what are hybrids? One school of thought says that if fertile hybrids occur naturally, then that in itself is evidence that the populations involved are in fact members of the same species (i.e. they share the same gene pool). This school of thought views interspecies hybrids with skepticism; it takes the point of view that if two populations with different species names interbreed, then the taxonomy is bad; they are not different species, they are one and the same species, however variable or different in appearance they seem. This is the team I'm on. The contrasting point of view accepts the existence of interspecies hybrids as entities nominally distinct from either parent. In the case of plants of cultivated origin (garden hybrids), these entities are apt to be named as nothospecies (with the name preceded by the times sign, ×). Wild populations of “hybrids” are typically not given nothospecific designation but are named according to the usual rules for plant nomenclature. There are cases where horticultural and formal botanical procedures either clash or seem mutually contradictory. For instance, in the old days, hybridists sometimes named their hybrids with Latinized names. Botanists seem to have one take on this, horticulturists seem to have another. The botanists sometimes use these Latinized names as the formal botanical name for all hybrids of similar parentage. Horticulturists tend to use the names to identify the original clone of the hybrid (if in fact there was one original clone). If, for instance, the original hybrid clone or strain was yellow flowered, but subsequent hybridizing along the same lines produced red or blue flowered plants, then the practice of formal botany to use the same name for all of these is very confusing to horticulturists who associate the name with one particular plant. Before leaving this topic, be aware that the word hybrid itself is used in mutually contradictory senses. Many people use the term hybrid in the sense of a cross between two nominally distinct species. The Latinized Greek term from which the word hybrid is derived seems to have had the sense of “mongrel” as opposed to interspecies hybrid, and this is in agreement with a broader sense of the meaning of the word hybrid which is just as prevalent as the interspecies concept: that hybrids are what result when two different breeding lines (of the same species) cross. Corn, for instance, is generally regarded as a single species, yet most corn grown today is of hybrid origin. The hybrids in question are sometimes distinguished as F1 hybrids. To the Romans, people of mixed parentage were hybrids. In this sense, the puppies from a Dachshund mother and Poodle father are hybrids. A lot more could be said about all of this. Jim McKenney jimmckenney@jimmckenney.com Montgomery County, Maryland, USA, 39.03871º North, 77.09829º West, USDA zone 7 My Virtual Maryland Garden http://www.jimmckenney.com/ BLOG! http://mcwort.blogspot.com/ Webmaster Potomac Valley Chapter, NARGS Editor PVC Bulletin http://www.pvcnargs.org/ Webmaster Potomac Lily Society http://www.potomaclilysociety.org/