Do you know if there’s a literature about it? I wouldn’t expect them to not be distinct, they’re ided separately and POWO sees them so.
A good example is Heracleum sosnowskyi, out of native range it’s a mix of different Caucasian species.
1 Like
The Lolium thing is mostly my observations plus the fact that the grass seed industry is hybridizing them so much that the Oregon State University Seed Lab (which is very involved with certifying the purity of crops) cannot use any of the traits they used to to distinguish the “species.” Not morphology. Not flourescence of the roots. Now they have to grow the plants from seed and they assign them to species by whether they seem to be annual (L. multiflorum) or perennial (L. perenne). Once you’re down to a one-character taxonomy, you don’t have much. Not anything worth calling a species distinction.
(Reminds me of asking one plant taxonomist what his criteria are for calling things two different species. He thought a while, then said, two traits that distinguish them and don’t seem to be the result of the same gene.)
3 Likes
There are a few like this. Portulaca oleracea and Chenopodium album are the first that come to mind. Kind of a mess if you’ve got a large dataset and are trying to segregate observations into native vs. introduced…
That seems reasonable enough. I’ll take one trait in which the two are truly distinct and a couple more in which they are mostly distinct as an alternative to two in which they are truly distinct, though. :-)
It’s very inconvenient when you have multiple genetic characters in which they are distinct but no morphological characters that work more than 2/3 of the time, but sometimes it happens…
1 Like
It is - but you still can’t remove the last s, as if it was for plural.
Like the homonyms, unfortunately specie is an accepted word - but it means the coins jingling in your pocket. Or the ‘paper’ notes.
4 Likes
Agreed!
But, then, I also use the plurals “octopodes” and “ibides”. If “species” stays in English long enough, it wouldn’t surprise me if it eventually loses its non-standard-for-English pluralization, as for most English speakers “octopus” and “ibis” already have.
And if you encounter someone with two eyes, be sure to use “irides”!
1 Like
But unlike your examples “specie” is an ugly word, so let’s hope it will never be used for species.
3 Likes
comes from specere = to look
species (with the s) = appearance, form, beauty
To continue the meandering off-trail and off-topic: In Spanish, I’ve seen both especie and especies used as the singular for species. Don’t know if both are considered proper in that language for a single species. I’ve assumed especie was okay.
Specieses.
4 Likes
Oh, god, no!
2 Likes
In native bees we use subspecies often. Bees are small enough that to tell them apart you probably need one under a microscope. Also there are so many yellow male Bombus where being able to call them by subgenus Pyrobombus is useful. In one case we are attempting to sort two cryptic species, Bombus calliginosus from the ever present and far more numerous Bombus vosnsenskii. @eebee built us a list of Pyrobombus that are often confounded so that we can name them to the subgenus, then go to Observation Fields, choose Pyrobombus and then click on a pair or trio of names that an individual might be, but that does not show characteristics clearly enough to tell apart.
Spex, plural spex
You describe subgenus though, question is about subspecies.
1 Like
I had not heard this about Tamarisk, at least the invasive species are being considerate to identifiers!
That’s what keeps this all so interesting, and why I linked the Wiki page for species concept above, there’s even more definitions than I’d been taught or knew about until now!
Personally, I’m somewhat more interested to know what determines a variety/form vs. a subspecies. In a quick search, I found this UBC Botanical Garden forum discussion which quotes a 1987 definition:
Christensen (1987; Nordic J. Botany 7: 383-408; see p.384) published a set of morphology-based guidelines for selection of rank, which I have long found extremely useful and apt:
The species concept used in the present work is morphological, and mostly in line with Rothmaler (1944) and Du Rietz (1930). The taxonomic ranks used are defined as follows:
Forma of a variety, subspecies or species occurs sporadically within the distribution area of the taxon of higher rank to which it is referred and differs from that taxon in a single character.
Varietas of a subspecies or species is to some extent allopatric and forms local, distinct populations as well as mixed, integrating populations within the distribution area of the subspecies or species. They differ from each other in usually more than a single, distinct character.
Subspecies of a species are both regionally and locally allopatric. They differ from each other in several, distinct characters, but intergrade in overlapping areas.
Species of a genus differ from each other in numerous, distinct characters and have a characteristic distribution area of their own. Where closely related species meet occasional hybridization and introgression may occur.
I wonder if this set of definitions is still current or widely accepted?
Gollum approves.
2 Likes
Those are the theoretical differences between variety and subspecies. On a practical level, we usually ignore those differences, treat varieties and subspecies as equivalent, but those are the distinctions we’d make if we thought about them.
The species concept given there is good, it’s what we’d like to see, but in fact some closely related species are more similar to that, which leads to a proliferation of definitions as we try to pin down this rather nebulous idea.
3 Likes
Juncus effusus (Soft Rush, though the leaf tips are stiff and painful, just not as stiff or painful as those of some other rushes) is an interesting case, I think.
First, the species level. Juncus effusus has recently been split in North America. Four or five native species have been split out of it in the Pacific Coast states. It’s also been split at the species level in the eastern states. However, the eastern vs. western botanists have been doing this work completely independently and it’s not clear how to reconcile these species from different sides of the continent, so the Flora of North America doesn’t recognize any of them. This is sad.
Juncus effusus itself has three major subspecies that I know about. Juncus effusus ssp. effusus is native to Europe. Juncus effusus ssp. solutus is native to eastern North America. Both of these have been introduced to the Pacific states & province, where J. effusus ssp. pacificus is native. Obviously, the differences matter.
These species and subspecies aren’t all that hard to tell apart if the appropriate parts are photographs. Unfortunately, the most important parts are the leaf sheath tops that are found near the base of the stems. Almost nobody photos these.
3 Likes
It isn’t always obvious to everyone that such differences matter. It could be a question of the degree of ecological equivalency.