Hi all, I looked around for a bit to see if this has been posted before. I didn’t see anything exactly like it but apologies if I missed it and this has been talked about already.
I mention Passiflora in the title because that is the genus I’ve explored the most through iNaturalist. I’m not sure how frequent this is on iNaturalist, outside of this genus.
Anyways, I was wondering: why are presumably wild hybrids, resulting from backcrossing (or self fertilization), grouped under names of specific cultivated hybrids like Passiflora ‘Incense’ or ‘Scarlet Flame’, instead of only under something like Passiflora incarnata x cincinnata? Is it just because it’s easier to look up? What if someone found another cultivated hybrid with the same parentage that had escaped into the wild (i.e., would Passiflora ‘Byte’ also be grouped under Passiflora ‘Incense’?)?
To be clarify what is being discussed here, in these examples the iNaturalist taxa are named with their proper hybrid names (eg Passiflora incarnata x cincinnata) but their English common names have been listed as the name of a cultivar.
I have not seen this before, but all of these cases within Passiflora seem to be the work of the same curator. Not totally sure if they’ve made the right call adding these cultivar names as the English common names, but I could see utility in having them listed as other common names, so they don’t show up as the default display names but are still searchable.
I have seen this Salvia apiana × leucophylla using the common name Desperado Sage. ‘Desperado’ is the garden cultivar. (And potentially confusing with Leucophyllum fructescens Desperado®). I am not sure why the curator who entered the hybrid chose to set the common name that way.
If that’s the case, those common name entries are inappropriate and misleading. I’ve never seen any other cases of this on inaturalist. It’s not consistent with the global standards for naming cultivated plants, and I don’t think it’s in line with inat’s guidelines for common names either.
A cultivar like Pasiflora ‘Incense’ is not defined by its hybrid parentage, it’s defined by its unique distinguishing features. That generally means unique genetics - i.e. most cultivars are all genetically identical clones propagated asexually. Like you point out, there are often many different cultivars which belong to the same species or hybrid. So it’s inaccurate to name an entire hybrid after a single cultivar.
I would flag those taxa for curation to ask for that common name to be removed (in fact, I might).