Lilium nomenclature

Adam Fikso adam14113@ameritech.net
Fri, 09 Oct 2009 13:18:48 PDT
Very well and thoroughly stated, Jim.  Would that our politicians were so 
thoughtful and educated in their disciplines.  Cheers. You're a good model 
for me. .  But then, there are fewer rules out there for interchange  in 
those other disciplines, away from horticulture and botany, and they're also 
not yet agreed on, or established over time.  .



Because this is a gardening list, we routinely commit the sin of omitting
the names of the authors of botanical names and the date of publication of
such names. And because this is a gardening list, I wouldn't want it any
other way.



However, this little flap we're having over the name of Lilium leichtlinii
is a good example of the occasionally confusing (contentious?) results of
that laissez faire attitude. In a technical paper the use of authors' names
and dates of publication will go a long way to preventing the confusion.



In an informal setting such as this list, we're often left to guess what
people mean. I am always perplexed when someone takes personally a vigorous
rebuttal to something they have posted. My point of view is that it comes
with the territory: there are limitations on how we can express ourselves on
this list, limitations which sometimes introduce their own problems. The
failure to cite authors and dates is one (but I'm certainly not advocating
that we adopt that practice). Another is that italics are not available on
this list. There are many name-formatting issues which I would like to
discuss on this list, but I've avoided these because we can't use italics.
Without italics, any such discussions would be unintelligible or very clumsy
- and that would no doubt add fuel to an already potentially inflammable
topic.



These niceties exist and are appreciated in other, more formal venues simply
because they make it easier for us to say what we mean in an efficient way;
they make it easy for the reader to understand what we mean on first
reading.

 


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