[Taxacom] validation of taxon names

[Curtis Clark]

On 2/19/2012 11:56 PM, Paul van Rijckevorsel wrote:
> I imagine there were (and are) many botanists who are looking at
> actual (living) plants as well, and who apply the iterative process,
> evaluating what characters are important, before deciding on what
> (parts of) plant to reduce to specimens.
Come on, you're just being snarky, and I expect better of you. Of 
*course* botanists looked at living plants. For my MS thesis in the 
early 1970s I looked at hundreds of exsiccatae, and then *visited the 
localities of everything interesting, unusual, or inexplicable* to see 
what the plants looked like in the field. And I came to different 
conclusions than those of exsiccatae-based studies of the past. My 
research career, and that of most of my students, differed little from 
that thereafter.

My general point is that systematics for many systematists is initially 
organism-based, rather than description-based. Don't try to read more 
into that than I intended.

-- 
Curtis Clark        http://www.csupomona.edu/~jcclark
Biological Sciences                   +1 909 869 4140
Cal Poly Pomona, Pomona CA 91768