Slightly off topic, was Dioscorea help

Christiaan van Schalkwyk cvschalkwyk@lantic.net
Thu, 07 May 2009 03:38:49 PDT
Dear all

Jan wrote:
> I would like to have a nice, correctly identified collection. But yeah, it
> is sometimes quite complicated.

This made me think of a story I once heard of a lady, walking through a 
botanical garden for the first time in her life, asking one of the gardeners 
what the labels on the plants meant.
He explained that the top name was the scientific name, the name below that 
was the common name, while the number at the bottom was the accesion number, 
and could be traced to an index card with all the data regarding the 
relevant plant.
Satisfied, she walk through another section of the garden, but after a while 
she returned with the following question: "Does all plants have scientific 
and common names ?"
"Yes", he replied.
"Ah, but isn't nature wonderful !" she exclaimed.

I think that a correctly identified collection is a dream for most of us, 
but finding nice up to date understandable and applicable info are a 
challenge for many genera. And unfortunately very few plants come with nice 
(and correct) labels !

Christiaan 


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