I'm glad to have found someone willing to continue this discussion with me, because the issues involved here illustrate well the confusion which can arise when the rules of nomenclature butt heads with the science which those rules should be reflecting accurately. Bob Nold wrote: "According to the Kew monograph, the taxon, Tulipa clusiana, an acknowledged species, found in the wild as mentioned earlier, *is pentaploid*. And he added: So “pentaploid” is not a distinguishing characteristic between the two. " Up until the late twentieth century the first part of that would have been true. But as the taxon Tulipa clusiana is currently interpreted, it includes forms which are not pentaploid. In fact, the only pentaploid entity which is a part of the species Tulipa clusiana is the original clone grown in western gardens for over four hundred years and which has been growing in the wild for who knows how long before that. When Bob wrote "So pentaploid is not a distinguishig characteristic between the two" he was right, but the reason he was right is because the "two" are one and the same thing. I don't have a copy of the Kew monograph to check, but I'll bet that the concept of Tulipa clusiana presented there is the same concept of that species which has existed since DC named the species. But the contemporary concept is different, although you might never guess it from the way that concept is sometimes expressed in the nomenclature. Jim McKenney _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.ibiblio.org http://pacificbulbsociety.org/list.php http://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbswiki/