Taxonomic Swap 110789
(Committed on 2022-05-16)
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Comments
@alberto_colatore !!! Please seek community input before you commit swaps like this with people actively using a taxon!!
Please read Weakley (2022) and H. Ballard's website for more information about violets in this group.
I am using V. macloskeyi subsp. pallens as a stand-in for an eventual V. minuscula, for example.
I followed POWO which is the recommended taxonomic authority on iNaturalist (checking also Flora of North America) and responding to a flag by another user. There were only 6 observations of the taxon.
But we can survey the community and eventually ask staff to reverse it, if a deviation from POWO was shared.
I flagged it just to create discussion. It was the sole subspecies, so I wanted to see if it was actually being used. The only kind of swap that can be made without community input is a nominotypic infrataxon into an otherwise empty species.
It doesn't need to be reversed, it's just bad practice to commit changes without discussion. You'll miss important nuances. For example, the synonymy given by POWO obscures the actual use of the pallens entity to indicate an eastern taxon in many sources. The sources I listed, which should be consulted, are frequently cited by POWO and can inform our handling of complicated taxon changes.
Key to acaulescent Viola taxa in the Pacific Northwest region of North America from Blaxland et al (2018):
Leaf blades broadly ovate to reniform, subentire along margins with obsolete crenations; California and southwestern Oregon ....... V. macloskeyi
– Leaf blades suborbicular to narrowly ovate, distinctly crenate; widespread in the western states and Canadian provinces ............... V. pallens
I took this to mean V. macloskeyi ssp. pallens (and any V. macloskeyi east of Oregon) is synonymous with V. pallens. But I suppose that V. macloskeyi could occur in the Eastern US but they don't bother mentioning it in a key for the PNW? But knowing violets I would assume it is not really the same species on the W and E coasts.
There have been some treatments of V. macloskeyi that conceptualize it, sensu latissimo, as a wide-ranging species (maybe even all the way to Hispaniola! - a cool example of migratory birds probably planting seeds from northern plants in suitable high-elevation sites in the tropics: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2666542). Until recently the pallens entity was taken to be the right name for the eastern representatives if split. But according to here, the name pallens needs to be replaced with minuscula because the type specimen for pallens is something else entirely.
POWO now synonymizes V. macloskeyi ssp. pallens with V. palustris ssp. palustris: https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:266701-2
Viola macloskeyi F.E. Lloyd has no accepted infraspecifics in POWO (https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:266700-2).
See also what stated in Flora of North America (http://www.efloras.org/florataxon.aspx?flora_id=1&taxon_id=242417465).