I’ve made no secret of my skepticism about the dandelion microspecies; but like a good scientist, I am willing to consider the evidence. On the observations page for Section Taraxacum, there are 126,751 observations. By far the majority are identified as Taraxacum officinale (strangely, the Taxonomy…

[image] jasonhernandez74: Is there a source that would tell me which lineages are apomictic and which are not? Do you mean within dandelions specifically? Technically yes; the original description of each species will probably say if it’s sexual or asexual, and other sources may as well, it’s…

[image] clement_m: Why isn’t there a Taraxacum officinale complex ? There is. “Taraxacum”. :-)

[image] nathantaylor: For what it’s worth, most robust species delimitation studies nowadays incorporate at least one other data type (usually morphology or ecological data), the molecular dataset they’re using is pretty limited for addressing population scale questions (which species delimitati…

[image] jasonhernandez74: Okay. Apomictic vs not. Oh, if only dandelion sex were as simple as “if they produce pollen, they reproduce sexually” vs. apomictic. Some species produce seeds by apomixis (without sex) but produce pollen that can fertilize ovules of other species of dandelion. Dan…

I agree. And yet if I agree to an observer’s ID at Taraxacum and mark “as good as can be,” I’m likely to get pushback. Not much pushback, admittedly, but enough that I’ve stopped doing it. And that means the Needs ID Taraxacum observations will mount up till there’s so many no one will ever want t…

[image] aspidoscelis: I think there are a lot of research questions that could be answered just fine with datasets and techniques that would be considered passé. Definitely. For a problem like dandelions, I think we need as many lines of evidence as possible. However, many taxonomic questio…

Incidentally, about a year ago, I came upon an observation which I wondered if it might be one of the native species. Look how different it looks from the usual ones we see – for one thing, it has only a single row of rays: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/55220704

Unfortunately there are not enought photos to say. It doesn’t look like T. officinale, but it would be nice to see other angles, the inflorescence on the side and the shapes of the seed.

The small flower size immediately tells me it’s not section Taraxacum. Fortunately it’s in British Columbia so we can try the key on it. Unfortunately we don’t even know what sections occur in other states or provinces, and there’s no key for all the sections in Europe, so that’s a significant obsta…

Don’t disagree entirely, but I think it depends on how good the a priori concepts are to begin with and what evidence you think will fill in your understanding. In general, though, I think the actual evidence that phylogenetic studies provide in supporting a species is often oversold and the import…

About those dandelions

General

jasonhernandez74 March 1, 2023, 12:11am 25

If North Carolina has any similar number, it would be worthwhile to make these determinations. Although it would be important to know if different exotic species occur in proximity, and how many could be expected in one town, for instance.

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About those dandelions

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