Image ANN0004i7 Uncertainty about name
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am.zooni
#scientist #name is #unclear Transcribed 'Smilax smallii lanceolata' as on label but that name is not found on TPL, ITIS or plants.UDSA. What a mess of info for someone to untangle!
TPL has: Smilax smallii Morong is a synonym of Smilax maritima Feay ex Alph.Wood (kew-289075) as well as 1) Smilax lanceolata L. is a synonym of Smilax laurifolia L. (kew-289209) and 2) Smilax lanceolata Walter is a synonym of Rajania hastata L (kew-289208) and 3) Smilax lanceolata Burm.f. is a synonym of Smilax glabra Roxb. (kew-289210).
ITIS has: 1) Smilax smallii Morong accepted (TSN 505258) and 2) Smilax smalli Morong not accepted - synonym of Smilax laurifolia L. (TSN 43363) as well as Smilax lanceolata L. not accepted - synonym of Smilax laurifolia L. (TSN 43358).
plants.USDA has Smilax smallii Morong accepted (symbol SMSM) as well as Smilax lanceolata auct. non L. synonym of Smilax smallii Morong (symbol SMLA2).
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md68135
scientist
@am.zooni ,
This one is a doozy for sure. First off the names does not appear to be validly published. The "correct" name for now is probably just Smilx smallii. With that said, the name Smilax maritima might be the name that ultimately gets used since its use pre-dates smallii.
That is probably more than you wanted to know!
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am.zooni
Actually I love this stuff! I used to think that the classification of plants (and other living things too) was all well and rigidly defined, until I started doing these transcriptions here. Haha, live and learn! I would check websites to make sure I was spelling the names correctly. And I kept finding cases where different (reliable, recommended here) sites disagreed about the status of a name. Now I always check the name on at least 2 sites just because I'm interested. Sometimes (like this one) I follow links into the tangled web to see where they will lead me.
I think for this one, it might be best to is to have an experienced scientist look at the specimen and make a fresh determination. There's only one there and it's from 1957. In addition to the question of "what's the currently accepted name of this plant?", it's not impossible that the plant isn't any of the above.
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md68135
scientist
Cool. I am glad you find it fascinating and not infuriating. A lot of people think scientists change the name just for fun and that the name should be static, but it is so much more complicated than that. We learn new things every day that inform our knowledge of the relationships among these plants.
We really want to build in more tools directly into Notes From Nature that make learning more about the organisms easier. We have funding and plans to bring in external content from sites like eol.org and mol.org. The idea being that a user can quickly access more information about the organisms if they want to know more about what they look like in the wild, where they grow, etc.
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am.zooni
Well, the whole point of science is to test what you (think you) know and learn new stuff, isn't it? These days on top of appearance, behavior, habitat,etc. you have genetic info that can confirm or totally change what's related to what.
Ah cool, I hadn't seen mol.org before. Links would be interesting. I often look at the common names listed on ITIS and the images of plants.USDA and EOL. Many of the specimens are dry and faded, so color photos at different seasons, close-ups of leaves, etc. are really helpful to bring them to life. I never learned Latin but since a fair amount of English words have Latin roots, I can 'interpret' some of the names, which are sometimes amusing and/or interesting, like changing 'Rhus' to 'Toxicodendron'.
I get a huge kick out of it when an image comes up that I can identify at least by genus or common name from a plant I know around home (pretty much limited to trees). As I have been working solely on the SELU images for several months now, I'm starting to recognize some of the plants that come up often there. Must admit though, there are a lot of grasses and to me they all rather blur together.
About the scientific names, I do only focus on the genus and species part. From searching for those, I can see that the disagreements and changes over time in the scientist name parts are even more of a tangle. But obviously there you get politics and influence as well as science in the mix (just like in every other field) and I'm not sure I want to go there!
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