[Taxacom] Read... and believe...

[Jim Croft]

That the type was examined is still no guarantee of getting it right.
You are still in a situation of trust, depending on someone else's
opinion that yes, this is the same as that.  Or more precisely, lies
within the range of the thing that it might be.

And we have all met botanists who could not put a name to the type
specimen without stuffing it up... ;)

jim

On Sat, Sep 5, 2009 at 5:44 AM, Mary Barkworth<Mary at biology.usu.edu> wrote:
> If specimens could only be identified/annotated by people who had
> examined the type specimen and read the relevant protologue, there would
> be few collections with identified specimens. I cannot speak for other
> organisms, but in vascular plant taxonomy in areas it is not too hard to
> find out what was meant by a name. The best thing to start by doing is
> find out what references were probably used in an area or by an
> individual. Going forward, however, it would help if we all adopted the
> practice of adding sensu ... And cite a reference used - a person if one
> is working from a published paper. But to think, as one person with whom
> I corresponded with several months ago seemed to think, that we can
> retrospectively add taxon concepts more easily than re-identify a
> specimen is nuts.
> Mary
>
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-- 
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Jim Croft ~ jim.croft at gmail.com ~ +61-2-62509499 ~
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... in pursuit of the meaning of leaf ...
... 'All is leaf' ('Alles ist Blatt') - Goethe