Rock Garden Quarterly Spring 2012 - (Page 138)

More than alMost any other group of gardeners, rock gardeners use the scientific names of plants, those mystifying binomials in Latin that botanists use. This makes sense, since many mountain plants have no established common names, or if they do, they are in languages far more daunting than Latin. So, to rock gardeners, it can be somewhat disconcerting to see that there has been a flood of recent changes to the scientific names of plants. Some of these are dramatic. In North America, we used to have a great many species of Aster – now we have only one, Aster alpinus, and our former asters are now divided among a number of other genera with mostly long and difficult to pronounce names, such as Canadanthus, Doellingeria, and Symphyotrichum. Even our beloved NARGS emblem, the shooting star, is no longer Dodecatheon, but just another group of Primula (1). When students are first taught the use of use scientific nomenclature, there is a strong emphasis on the unifying and stable nature of these scientific names. Throughout the world, the same Latin names are used for the plants, so people in North America can look at books or websites about Chinese plants or Iranian plants secure in the knowledge that at least the Latin names will provide a familiar context. A basic principle of plant science is that any plant can bear only one correct Latin name when circumscribed in a particular way – the oldest name that meets the requirements of the (arcane) rules in the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (2). This is a most important principle in working towards the goal of a stable nomenclature for plants. Unfortunately, this basic principle also contains within it the seeds of change: the phrase “when circumscribed in a particular way.” And we presently seem to be undergoing a flourish of re-assignment of species to different genera, and genera to different families, than in older, familiar reference books. So what is behind all these changes? Plant systematics (the classification of plants) has undergone a revolution in the past couple of decades that revolves around three primary scientific advances. The first is that we now have the technology to access the genomes of plants. Simply, the genome is the complete set of genetic material found in each cell of an organism. So, we can essentially read directly the base Pretty shooting star, Primula pauciflora (Dodecatheon pulchellum), Horse Rock Ridge, Oregon 138 Rock Garden Quarterly Vol. 70 (2)

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Rock Garden Quarterly Spring 2012

Geoffrey Charlesworth Writing Prize
2011 Photo Contest Winners
2012 Photo Contest Announcement
Seven Unheralded Axioms of Rock Gardening
Rock Gardening from Scratch: Vegetative Propagation - Understanding Cuttings
Newfoundland's Southern Limestone Barrens
William J. Dress, 1918-2011
DNA and the Changing Names of Plants ... and Making Sense of the Dicots
Jennings Prairie
Carl Gehenio, 1922-2011
Rock Gardening Roots
Plants that Dazzled me in 2011
Phipps Conservatory
Rock and Ink Struck into Flowers - A Response
Bulletin Board
2012 - Eastern Study Weekend: October, Pittsburgh - Registration form and details

Rock Garden Quarterly Spring 2012

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