Taxonomic changes are being made all the time. There are still a few that are based on morphology, but the majority seem to be based on dna. And there are variations of how elaborate or carefully done that may be. Sometimes proposed changes are accepted by botanists in the countries where the plants occur, sometimes not. And sometimes the proposed changes in names are not widely accepted. When we had the topic of the week on Scilla in 2003, Julian Slade reported on the proposed changes. https://pacificbulbsociety.org/pbslist/… Some of them were adopted. Others were not. Our wiki now has been in existence a number of years. There are only a few volunteers who are actively involved. There is no one checking whether material added in the past conforms with the most recent data bases and if they differ, how do you decide? Discussions in the past have made the point that as long as you add the name of the person who published the name of the plant the name is considered correct. We didn't do that in the beginning, but I'm slowly adding them if a page I'm working on is changed. And I also add synonyms (but with some plants it is hard to decide how many to add as there have been so many changes and it can be time consuming to find them). Synonyms are important as a lot of people will be growing plants under old names or have reference books published before the name changes. Many years ago those of us working on the wiki at the time made the informal decision (after changing Ornithogalum and Albuca back and forth more than once) to wait when new names were proposed to see if they were broadly accepted. When Graham Duncan wrote his book on Lachenalia in 2012 none of us wanted to tackle all the changes he proposed, especially since his book did not make it very easy to do so. Some things that looked very different were lumped together and some things that looked the same were split and there wasn't a page listing all these changes. Recently I made the unwise (in terms of my time) decision to update Lachenalia since we are now in 2018 and Plants of the World Online which is replacing the Plant List has accepted most of the changes. I found it tough going reading his book as a gardener, not a taxonomist or a botanist. Some of the differences seemed subtle and based on small morphological differences and location of the plant which made figuring out what photo someone had added of a plant in cultivation belonged to what new species very difficult. Even the photos in the book of different species sometimes looked the same to me After spending many hours many days in frustration I decided I had done enough and a few of them I didn't change. I made references to and added all the names of the people who had published the names for some of those. For example: Lachenalia pallida Aiton is found on clay flats in large colonies in the Northwest and Southwest Cape. In Graham Duncan's 2012 book he proposed including Lachenalia gillettii W.F.Barker, Lachenalia pustulata Jacq., and Lachenalia unicolor Jacq. in this species. One day when I am feeling more charitable I may change Lachenalia violacea as some of our photos of it probably represent Lachenalia glauca, a new species Duncan elevated from a variety. I suspect it will be awhile before I tackle another one of those name changes (like changing Spiloxene to Pauridia) which would also take a lot of time. The PBS wiki was originally created as a place for members of the PBS list to add photos of the plants they were growing or seeing. I guess I'm to blame for making it more than that as I wanted to be able to find the photos later and to know a bit about them. Remember it just represents whatever a volunteer added to the page and there are not enough of those to keep it up to date. Plants of the World Online I suspect one day will be the reference people go to. They are constantly uploading more information to it: http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/ But you will still find people who are using old names or who do not agree. Mary Sue > I would like a reference I could use to synchronize with PBS as that is the community I am in. Any suggestions? > _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net http://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/…