One of the things I am always wanting these re-denominations to do, since they're using DNA sequencing to find closer vs more distant relationships among related species, is to give me an idea of which species will most likely hybridize with each other. I haven't had a chance to skim through this yet, but the quick glance-over I made gives me the impression that there will have to be quite a number of intergeneric names created or restored. I've always thought intergeneric hybrids were cool because they were so rare or unusual, and often produced a hybrid between two dissimilar looking plants or flowers with the resulting plant or flower looking like it was photoshop-morphed between the two species. But if all these different groups are now completely different genera, and we already have many many crossed between what are now a plethora of different genera, the fact that they are now also intergeneric hybrids makes an intergeneric hybrid not that cool or unusual (nor do they give the sense of some newly morphed appearing plant or flower). Plus, do the various genus names give any indication which ones are compatible with each other (as in, did they turn out to be cladisticly more closely related w.r.t. their DNA sequences), including all the ones we already know will hybridize with each other, but more especially, the ones no one has tried to hybridize but now we can suspect that they likely will hybridize? I'm not an Iris expert: Do all the different, now, genera hybridize with each other? And why does there seem to be a reticence towards creating subgenus names (compared to the various other in-between classification names that get created all the time)? For example, among Cape bulbs, I really really wish there were subgenus names for the various distinct Moraea groups. And now that Polyxena has been subsumed into Lachenalia, I wish they would still name them in some way that shows their separate distinctness from almost all the other Lachenalias while looking and growing very similarly to each other. Also, did they give a supergeneric name to the whole panoply of genera? Whining about change again, --Lee Poulsen Pasadena, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a Latitude 34°N, Altitude 1150 ft/350 m On Nov 11, 2015, at 2:43 PM, Jim McKenney <jamesamckenney@verizon.net> wrote: > I've spent some more time with this today, and except for one major objection, I'm really enjoying it. I really like the way this displays the irises in a way which lets anyone quickly see the interrelationships. And for those of us who have been reading the iris literature for decades, it helps to see long disused names fit back into the picture. Anyone who knows the iris literature knows that most of the genus names used in this monograph are in fact names which have been used in the past - sometimes centuries ago , sometimes during our lifetimes. So most of them are not really new. > There is a brief discussion about the work of Dodoens, a sixteenth-century herbalist (he died in 1587) who way back then correctly ascertained the relationships among some of the spuria irises and Iris foetidissima , a relationship which modern botanists missed until recently. Dodoens was the author of the herbal which was translated into most European languages of the time, including at least twice into English (parts translated by Lyte in the 1570s and by Gerard at the end of that century). For me, little bits like that make the read worth the time spent with this work. > Our old friends spuria, anguifuga, graminea and foetidissima now cohabitate as the genus Chamaeiris. Note that this is not the Iris chamaeiris of grandma's garden. >