Thanks very much to Lee Poulsen for this clear explanation of what is (to me, anyway) a shocking example of lumping. I always wonder to what extent the genomes of the various plants are compared. If only certain sequences are chosen for comparison, have they chosen the right ones? It's true that cladistic charts bring interesting information to light, but they are only as good as their data. (A very misleading picture of Amerindian languages was produced with input from wordlists of poor quality, several decades ago.) It's good to see the (former?) Rhodophiala bifida separated from the rest of Rhodophiala, and as Lee notes, its cultivation is quite opposite from that of the others. Even though the rest as, as he notes, all Chilean, their habitats cover a great range from coastal dunes to high alpine scrubland, and at least one (R. araucana) gets over into the rain shadow of the eastern Andes. I have some seedlings of various species now and hope I can grow them, or give them to Mark Akimoff for his frost-free greenhouse. The high-elevation R. rhodolirion would need a cool, frost-free, nearly dry winter, as many challenging alpines do. I've always wondered why Famatina was separated from Rhodophiala, but no amateur plant-lover would imagine them to be the same subgenus as Habranthus. By the way, how did Placea escape this reclassification, or is it now Hippeastrum? I see that the NARGS seed exchange list includes well-known names that have been superseded recently in parentheses, which would produce e.g. "Habranthus (Rhodophiala) bagnoldii." Perhaps we should do that in PBS publications. Jane McGary, Portland, Oregon, USA On 3/4/2025 4:55 PM, Lee Poulsen via pbs wrote: >> On Feb 28, 2025, at 10:10, Jane McGary via pbs <pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> wrote: >> >> Have the previous genus names been retained as designating sections within the lumped genus? My interest is only academic, since I can't grow any of these plants without a heated greenhouse, but it makes me wonder if we should be adding something like "Sect. Polianthes" after the new names, if only to clarify matters for people familiar with the older classification. >> >> Jane McGary, Portland, Oregon, USA >> > Hi Jane, > > This subject came up in another group I belong to and I wrote the following response which I think answers your question. > > ------- > The most useful and insightful nomenclature in the paper lumping so many different related genera into Zephyranthes are the subgenus names. I found the subgenus names (and the groups they are assigned) to be the most informative aspect of that part of the paper. IMO, they should have assigned the subgenus names as the genus names for the different groupings. > > However, they gave their excuse as to why they did not end up assigning the subgenus names as genus names instead: > "A division into subgenera would be informative regarding relationships within each genus, notwithstanding that this subgeneric classification is open to further considerations as their phylogenetic structures are better resolved. The refinement of the subgeneric taxonomy, however, would not require additional changes in species names (as subgeneric names are not part of the binomial). Therefore, this scheme is likely to lead to more robust nomenclatural stability in this traditionally contentious group." > > What they don't acknowledge is that because the subgenus name is not typically written in the binomial scientific name, no one sees it or knows of it, and the excellent knowledge about each subgenus group is basically lost to most people. > > FYI, here are the subgenera they came up with. Most of them used to be separate genera of their own. What they learned from the DNA sequencing data was that here and there, a species didn’t belong in the former genus, but in a different one. And so there was a little re-sorting of which group a species belonged in. This is excellent information to publish. The only problem is that they then subsumed all that information into the subgenus name which won’t get propagated to everyone interested in this tribe unless they have access to this paper, or it is passed along by people identifying these species in photos or other text or posts. > > All the following subgenera are in the new lumped genus Zephyranthes with the former genus name or example species in parentheses: > * Neorhodophiala (Rhodophiala bifida) > * No subgenus name given (Habranthus pedunculosis) > * Myostemma (Myostemma, formerly Rhodophiala, but also with a few re-sorted species from Famatina and Habranthus. However, Zephyranthes [Myostemma] graciliflora, which is the new name for Famatina herbertiana is a sister group of its own to all the other Myostemmas.) > * Habranthus (H. estensis, jamesonii, gracilifolius) > * Eithea (Eithea) > * Zephyranthes (Zephyranthes, all the remaining Habranthus, Haylockia, and strangely Sprekelia even though the cladogram shows both Sprekelia species being a sister group to all the other subgenus Zephyranthes species) > ------- > I am not a fan of severe splitting either. Creating new genus names over relatively small differences that maybe only a botanist might care about also seems like a bad extreme to me. Maybe I think differently because I am not a botanist. But I have done some genealogy of my own family, and when I look at some of these great DNA sequence cladograms, my eye is immediately drawn to *groupings* of the various branches. When you look at the species that fall within some of these branch groupings, often a little “aha” light bulb goes off in your head as you realize what is and isn’t closely related to each other. You also get a good feeling about what are often called “sister genera” or “sister” groups. But to see a bunch of botanist authors *notice* the distinct groupings and yet decide to go to the outermost node points of the groups of branches and declare they are all one genus just seems too extreme a conclusion to me. And in this (in)famous Zephyranthes paper, they admit that the subgenus groups they identify are the most informative and indicative information about the entire tribe. But then they give this (IMO) copout reason for not using them—which is that they intentionally obscure the use of the subgenera so that the names *don’t* change as better DNA information is discovered—seems like the wrongest of reasons to do so. I thought one of the major reasons for doing all this sequencing was to find out which species are and are not most closely related to each other, and they they all relate in a larger family/group. > > The fact that they did discover that a few species needed to be relocated to completely different genera and subgenera is *great* information to learn from the DNA sequencing. And then to bury it in the subgenus names seems like a step backwards after that. > > I heard through the grapevine that some of the authors looked at the DNA sequence information, as well as knowing some of the problems botanists have had over the decades in determining where a species belonged, and were strongly thinking they should classify *all* of the Zephyranthes subtribe and the Hippeastrum subtribe into only one genus!! Talk about lumping. > > --Lee Poulsen > San Gabriel Valley, California, USA - USDA Zone 10a > Latitude 34°N, Altitude 340 ft/100 m > > [Just two examples of why I think this obscuring the important distinctions between these various subgenera is so important is for one, the subgenus Myostemma [syn. Rhodophiala]. They are all from Chile. Which mostly has a mediterranean (and related) climate. Probably the most important distinction being that winter is the growing season there with all the rain falling during that time and the temperature being cool, whereas the summers are pretty much completely rainless and warm to hot. This is unlike *all* of the rest of the tribe that grow in areas where it rains during the summer when the temperature is warm to hot. It also makes it very difficult for a lot of people in non-mediterranean climates to grow the species in this subgenus. Plus, you have to plant the seeds in the fall instead of in the spring. This is quite distinctive IMO. Secondly, it is very informative to finally find out that what was formerly known as Rhodophiala bifida is not part of that subgenus, but belongs in a subgenus all of its own. It comes from an area where it mostly rains all summer and is much drier in the winter (Argentina and Uruguay). But unlike all the other non-Myostemma Zephyranthes, its growing season is during the winter, like the Myostemma, and yet it isn’t bothered by all the rain that falls during its dormant season, summer—completely unlike the Myostemma species that will rot if they are watered during the summer.] > > _______________________________________________ > pbs mailing list > pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net > https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… > Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> > PBS Forum https://… _______________________________________________ pbs mailing list pbs@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net https://lists.pacificbulbsociety.net/cgi-bin/… Unsubscribe: <mailto:pbs-unsubscribe@lists.pacificbulbsociety.net> PBS Forum https://…