The straw that broke Malpighiales' back

[Paul van Rijckevorsel]

> I was reminded offlist that ICBN does not require priority for ordinal
names, but there is a recommendation that priority should generally be
followed.

+ + +
Quite
+ + +

And in this case, I think priority should have been followed since Violales
has both priority and is well known.  But if they are separate orders (as I
have proposed), the priority issue is no longer a problem anyway.

+ + +
I must admit to feeling a little uncomfortable with the very large orders
that the APG uses, especially as this also means that families must become
larger. This is a source of extra instability in nomenclature, which is
especially unhappy if what first was a family now becomes a subfamily or
lower-ranking taxon, without any great change in taxon circumscription. The
public at large only recognises species, genus and family names, which means
that names at these ranks deserve extra (stabilizing) care from taxonomists.
Perhaps it would be a good idea if the APG-custom of using informal names
("rosids", "eurosids" ) were to be extended for taxa that the APG now
regards as orders: this would allow orders to be delimited closer to
traditional usage?

Just philosophizing,
Paul van Rijckevorsel
Utrecht, NL

+ + +
  >      I should note that I am very open to shifting some of the families
around in these 5 orders.  In fact, I am already considering moving
Pandaceae, Lophopyxidaceae, and Goupiaceae from Euphorbiales to Violales.
>                ----- Cheers,
>                           Ken Kinman
>