Taxonomic Swap 43611 (Committed on 2020-09-16)

Not a form. Cultivars aren't represented as separate taxa on iNaturalist. No infraspecific taxa are accepted on Plants of the World Online: http://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/89403-1

No named forms or varieties appear to exist for this taxon: https://www.ipni.org/?q=Zantedeschia%20aethiopica

See https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/294247 for previous discussion.

See also https://www.inaturalist.org/identifications?taxon_id=414930&current=any for finding observations formerly classified under this cultivar, so as to instead add an observation field, comment, or otherwise track these for your own external purposes.

Yes
Added by tonyrebelo on November 27, 2018 12:41 PM | Committed by tonyrebelo on September 16, 2020
replaced with

Comments

@jon_sullivan @stephen_thorpe @david_lyttle
@warweeds @murray_dawson

Zantedeschia aethiopica 'green f. goddess' to Zantedeschia aethiopica

I was going to make this swap, but did not realize that this cultivar was so prominent - if only in New Zealand.
iNat does not do cultivars, hence the sinking of this. But will we lose useful data if we do?
Is this an alien invasive species? Or is it purely a garden plant?

Even so, is there any benefit in keeping this separate from the species?
If so, we will probably have to make a special case and motivate for it ...

Posted by tonyrebelo over 5 years ago

Since we already have it as a name in use, it may be best not to destroy it!

Posted by stephen_thorpe over 5 years ago

We will need a better motivation than that for a deviation with POWO and the norm of not including cultivars in the dictionary.
Is it a useful distinction to separate the green from the white forms of Arum Lily?
How many of the cultivar are merely identified to species instead of the cultivar?
Are the behaviours of the cultivar and the normal Arum different when invasive or naturalized?

Posted by tonyrebelo over 5 years ago

I have no idea!

Posted by stephen_thorpe over 5 years ago

The taxon with the creamy green spathe, Zantedeschia aethiopica 'Green Goddess' is fully naturalized in New Zealand (https://nzflora.landcareresearch.co.nz/default.aspx?selected=NameDetails&NameId=8215C505-D91D-498C-A38B-CCB3B289A130&StateId=&Sort=0&TabNum=0) and so is the taxon with the white spathe Zantedeschia aethiopica (L.) Spreng. (https://nzflora.landcareresearch.co.nz/default.aspx?selected=NameDetails&TabNum=0&NameId=5CA8EA8D-536E-4669-841C-906606F81722). They are clearly different and we need to distinguish between them.

On a broader note, I really do not like the guidelines of excluding cultivar names - and tag names too which is a related issue. We are losing precision. Let's for now ignore a multitude of arguments such as cultivated plants are what the wider community first engage with in their daily lives, and stick with fully naturalized and endemic taxa.

Another taxon recognised by a cultivar name that is fully naturalized in NZ is Watsonia meriana 'Bulbillifera' (https://nzflora.landcareresearch.co.nz/default.aspx?selected=NameDetails&Action=Display&CancelScript=1&TabNum=0&NameId=986D8EC0-AD6A-49FA-A795-7E385B8807B7&StateId=&Sort=0) although you could argue a case for instead following Watsonia meriana var. bulbillifera (J.W.Mathews & L.Bolus) D.A.Cooke (1998).

A third one I can think of is Lamium galeobdolon 'Variegatum' (https://nzflora.landcareresearch.co.nz/default.aspx?selected=NameDetails&TabNum=0&NameId=5094F724-43BE-40B0-80EC-104C54193D52).

The other issue is tag-names - NZ orchidologists are very frustrated that they cannot use some well accepted tag-names for undescribed species (OK, there are some less accepted tag-names too!), and this must be a far greater issue for the much larger Australian flora which has so many more undescribed species.

The early implementation on iNat where you could link to a species, and add a custom name underneath was really nice as it overcame problems such as these.

Posted by murray_dawson over 5 years ago

I'm with Murray. There must be better things to be getting on with on iNat than destroying what other users find useful!

Posted by stephen_thorpe over 5 years ago

Assuming we keep this, there are several other issues here.

These include:

The name is wrongly formulated. The correct name would be "green goddess" and not "Zantedeschia aethiopica 'green goddess'"
The use of the inverted commas messes up the creation of urls and filters involving the taxon
It is not a botanical "form" as listed, but in fact a cultivar, which iNaturalist does not currently cater for. As a consequence it displays as "Zantedeschia aethiopica 'green f. goddess'" with an "f" inserted before Goddess.

Posted by tonyrebelo over 5 years ago

https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/79523-Watsonia-meriana - has two vars that occur naturally and are recognized locally, but I see POWO synonymizes them.

It is the var that is used in NZ. The cultivar is not in the dictionary.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/413410-Watsonia-meriana-bulbillifera

Posted by tonyrebelo over 5 years ago

tag names. In s Africa, where these are published we use them as temporary names, to be synonimized when published. We use Cape Plants as the reference.

We also have an observation field to flag these, accessed via a project: see https://www.inaturalist.org/projects/undescribed-species-and-taxa
&
https://www.inaturalist.org/observation_fields/8546

Posted by tonyrebelo over 5 years ago

The form of the name may not be ideal, but it is workable without any serious problems.

Posted by stephen_thorpe over 5 years ago

Heavens: you New Zealanders are almost as bad as us southern Africans. The Americans will freak out when they discover this!

TAXONOMIC SWAP PARKED.

Posted by tonyrebelo over 5 years ago

We'll take that as a compliment! :)

Posted by stephen_thorpe over 5 years ago

The names should reflect our best knowledge at the time, the botanical codes, and the diversity that we see. There are some suggestions that the cream/green spathed Zantedeschia may not belong to the species Zantedeschia aethiopica, but I have not seen firm evidence to back this up. I guess what @tonyrebelo is saying by the name wrongly formulated is that it does not fit the iNat database structure? Following the cultivated code, the correct name is indeed Zantedeschia aethiopica 'Green Goddess' - with single quotes and capital letters for the cultivar epithet. Otherwise it is a workaround.

Posted by murray_dawson over 5 years ago

Hmmm.

@tonyrebelo, @stephen_thorpe, @murray_dawson, while I get your point that this is a distinct cultivar that is commonly naturalised in NZ, it is not a taxonomic entity or a validly described name. We do not have separate entries for other named cultivars of ornamental species that have become widely naturalised.

While I understand your point about losing detail, iNaturalist has 'Tag' fields and 'Observation Fields' that are designed precisely to hold this type of information. In my opinion, it should not live as an entry in our taxonomy when it is not a taxonomic entity.

Posted by mftasp over 3 years ago

Tag and observation fields are useless if you want to map the cultivar, add it to place checklists, or keep other information associated with it. The cultivar name does no harm and is useful, so it would seem perhaps somewhat "control freakish" to object to it.

Posted by stephen_thorpe over 3 years ago

Any thoughts @loarie, @bouteloua?

@stephen_thorpe as for mapping, I would direct you to read How to use iNaturalist's Search URLs where you should be able to see that you can, indeed, easily map by values in Tag and Observation Fields.

Did you get banned from the forum for the sort of passive aggressive comments like the 'control freakish' one you made just then?

Posted by mftasp over 3 years ago

You can hack a map, sure, but what about the other two things I mentioned?
No offence intended, I just don't see the point in this sort of pedantic pushing of rules, depriving other users of what they might find useful and which does no harm, for no gain that I can see.

Posted by stephen_thorpe over 3 years ago

Ok, so like all curators, I am supposed to adhere to a set of rules when curating taxa, and I'm trying to work out what to do with this thing while following them.

There are two separate conversations here: should we be accepting non-validly-described taxa in our classification? Every time I've seen the question asked, the answer has been no. That said, it is iNat's stated goal to help users be closer to nature, and not as a source of taxonomic truth. Is there a case for accepting named cultivars in our taxonomy? If so how do we keep control on a proliferation of made up names that aren't actually an entity (a taxon). In many cases cultivars are hybrids descended from multiple, sometimes unknown parent species. Where do you attach them to the classification? Can you even be sure that Zantedeschia aethiopica 'green goddess' is a cultivar made up exclusively of Zantedeschia aethiopica? (presumably the creator would know but this info is not formally published for cultivars and in many modern cases is a trade secret).

Secondly, there are instances I've seen that resemble this one in that practical reasons (for example conservation statuses applied to taxa that our taxonomic reference consider synonyms of something else) cause us to deviate from our taxonomic reference for particular taxa. However, in every case I've seen, the name used was one which was validly described in the first place, which this is not. Finally, iNaturalist's series of taxonomic ranks specifically does not include cultivars (presumably since they are not a taxon).

In this case, and until we have a more formal way of dealing with cases like this, it might be more convenient to deviate from POWO and alter the taxon framework relationship to map both iNat entries for Zantedeschia aethiopica 'green goddess' and Zantedeschia aethiopica to POWO's Zantedeschia aethiopica. Also I would delete Zantedeschia aethiopica f. aethiopica which is not a valid taxon and has no observations. Since Zantedeschia aethiopica 'green goddess' is not a valid name according to the code of botanical nomenclature, no autonym (f. aethiopica) is generated automatically.

Posted by mftasp over 3 years ago

One problem is that, at least for zoological nomenclature (I'm not quite so sure about botanical nomenclature, but I suspect the same is true), many formal names currently in use are actually (or at least arguably) unavailable (zoo)/illegitimate (bot) on nomenclatural technicalities anyway, so it is impossible in practice to enforce any such requirement on iNat. It is still very hard for me to see any real disadvantage in using informal cultivar names, like the one at issue, given that professional botanists routinely use such names in published papers dealing with lists of plants from particular locations. IMHO, there isn't a problem here, so surely it is not worth wasting any more time or effort arguing about nothing? I am simply offering my opinion on the issue. I will leave it to others to decide the issue, but I really can't see any point in prohibiting something that many users may find useful, just because it could cause problems if such names were created and used indiscriminately, without due care.

Posted by stephen_thorpe over 3 years ago

Just for the record, as curator I was going to make this change, but it seemed like throwing good data away, hence this discussion. And in terms of Alien Control, it might be especially useful.
If we keep it, two things need to be done.

The name needs to be correctly consituted
A deviation needs to be set up.
It seems like the feelings are that we should keep it and not sink it. There are alternatives, but they are clunky. (everyone understands IDs, but only relatively advanced users can navigate the mine of observation fields and how to find and use them).

Posted by tonyrebelo over 3 years ago

Well I vote for keeping it. It has enough defined meaning to be useful (as you say " throwing good data away", which is never a good idea!)

Posted by stephen_thorpe over 3 years ago

OK: I am changing this name (it has to be via a swap) to one that displays correctly.
Hopefully I have set up the taxonomy details correctly as a deviation (except that it shows as a match and not a deviation: help!).
I am doing this here so that this discussion will be preserved.

Posted by tonyrebelo over 3 years ago

This is wrong and must be changed back. This is not a forma. This is English and not Latin.

Posted by robertarcher397 over 3 years ago

Changing it back was also wrong. Except more wrong!!
It was a forma - it still is a forma. There is no "back" in your interpretation.
The only other option that iNaturalist allows is to simply sink it as part of the species. And the discussion above here suggests that that will not be acceptable to some users ...

Posted by tonyrebelo over 3 years ago

Replace green-goddess with 'green-goddess'. That will at least indicate it is not a formal form.

Posted by robertarcher397 over 3 years ago

done

Posted by tonyrebelo over 3 years ago

Hey Tony, I have changed the taxon framework relationship, as both our internal Z. aethiopica and Z. aethiopica 'Green Goddess' are included within POWO's concept of Z. aethiopica. I have also linked back to this conversation: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_framework_relationships/206755

Posted by mftasp over 3 years ago

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