Ranunculus revision?

Robt R Pries rpries@sbcglobal.net
Fri, 20 Jul 2007 05:50:49 PDT
Jane; I wonder if this might be an instance of lumping
verses spliting. In such a case Ranunculus kochii
would be a different plant than Ficaria kochii. The
lumpers would just say it is Ranunculus ficaria. The
sad part is that, it seems to me that lumpers also
don;t like to deal with varieties, therefore they
would not use Ranunculus ficaria var. kochii as the
replacemnt and we are left with no recognition of the
variation. In general it seems to me that there are
more lumpers in the West and more splitters in the
East. Frankly I don't care which prevails as long as
all the variability has a name.

High Ridge, MO, USA. hot, muggy, zone 5/6 changing to
7 in the beautiful Ozark mountains (Hills for some)
--- Jane McGary <janemcgary@earthlink.net> wrote:

> While reading Janis Ruksans's new book, I came
> across a reference to 
> "Ficaria kochii." I surmised this was what has long
> been known as 
> Ranunculus kochii (a plant I lost some years ago and
> would love to have 
> again), so I Googled it and found four citations of
> Ficaria kochii Ledeb. 
> Then I wondered what has now happened to the common
> Ranunculus ficaria L. 
> (the bright yellow weed that gets into lawns), and
> apparently it's now 
> Ficaria verna Huds.
> 
> Does anyone know whether this revision is fully
> accepted? It'll certainly 
> annoy a lot of people who grow 'Brazen Hussy'!
> 
> Jane McGary
> Northwestern Oregon,
> USA
> 
> 
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