A recent taxon change/split has bounced many of my wild violet (genus Viola) observations to “Subsection Borealiamericanae”. Can anyone explain how (or where I can find out how) to differentiate my observations into the new species resulting from this change? I’m not a botanist (everything I know about plants I learned from iNat!) so I have no familiarity with what’s going on in the academic world regarding this split.
Thanks!
If you go into the taxon split flags, there’s a lot of discussion about the splits. That said, for now - if you are in the coverage area of the Flora of the SE US, that will cover the taxonomy.
The main challenge I see presently with the split is that a lot of plants are now subspecies (this is not the problem, to be clear), which means they will be defaulted to species level unless the observer and an identifier agree on the subspecies (this is the problem). I flipped my observations to V.sororia sororia but the system will not accept the subspecies labeling by me alone. Not sure how this will work for people sorting through observations.
Yeah, while I didn’t go through every new species, I didn’t see any discussion under the flags for the northeastern forms that I’m recording (see the flags for Viola sororia for example). That’s kind of what I was looking for… can you link me to the discussions you’re seeing?
My problem isn’t taxa reverting to species, but rather species reverting to “subsection” (under genus Viola). Thanks.
Yes, the reversion you reference is the result of the taxon split.
If you go to this link: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_splits/170996
There is discussion at the bottom, but also - at the top of the page, there are two links to additional taxons where there is further discussion on the splits.
Thanks. From reading the thread it looks like the discussion got a little contentious…
The simplest possible answer is that Viola subsection Borealiamericanae is “one of those groups” that spits in the face of anyone trying to define species out of it. However, as it currently stands, the most common morphology of the current sense of Viola sororia (sensu stricto) is very hairy across the foliage and calyx lobes, but lacks dense hairs on the spurred (lower) petal. Everything else is something else. The very common, mostly or entirely hairless violet of lawns is now Viola communis, its white-and-blue-flowered form now V. communis forma priceana.
That said, Harvey Ballard has made a lot of headway in this space, and his papers and website go into great detail with regards to his findings and treatments. With his permission, I adapted one of his keys into a journal post here on iNat with some functionality improvements to allow jumping to the next couplet without needing to scroll through the whole paper.
In plants, when you have infraspecies (subspecies/varieties/forma) described under a species, generally most individuals within that species concept are referrable to an infraspecies, in the same way that when you have a genus with species under it most individuals in that genus would be referrable to a described species under that genus (excluding hybrids, etc.).
In the context FSUS is using Viola sororia var. sororia, it is intended to be Viola sororia sensu stricto, or a more restricted sense of Viola sororia. It distinguishes individuals that match the type specimen of Viola sororia more closely than Harvey Ballard’s hypothetical undescribed varieties, which FSUS treats as “Viola sororia var. 1 [‘glabrous’ variant]” and “Viola sororia var. 2 [‘hirsutuloides’ variant].” It does not pose an issue for iNaturalist’s taxonomy because iNat does not use undescribed taxa. See this key: https://fsus.ncbg.unc.edu/main.php?pg=show-key.php&keyid=40881
Thank you! My brain is gonna need a few rounds to absorb this, but this is extremely helpful and thank you!
As asteroidowl says, there’s a lot here to digest, but this is exactly what I was looking for and extremely useful… thanks!
