[Taxacom] Descriptive suprafamilial names of plants

[Ken Kinman]

Hi Paul,                           

         No small wonder many people expressed their unhappiness with the proposal that a Class Equisetopsida be used for embryophytes, instead of Kingdom Metaphyta or Kingdom Plantae.  Reducing a KINDGOM taxon to a CLASS simply to avoid making Class Chlorophyta paraphyletic is one of the worst examples of "cladification" (strictly phylogenetic classification) I have ever seen.                           

       Can you imagine the outcry if someone reduced Kingdom Animalia (Metazoa) to a Class (just to avoid making some protist Class paraphyletic)?  So adopting Embryopsida instead of Equisetopsida isn't much better.  Let's stick with Kingdom Metaphyta or Embryophyta (or even Plantae).  Otherwise, botany is going to slowly destroy any useful higher classification of plants.                                            

                                    --------------------Ken Kinman 

 

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Paul wrote:

 

In a fairly well-known paper by Chase & Reveal (2009), a choice was made to adopt Equisetopsida for the embryophytes, and many people have expresses their unhappyness about this choice (having a preference for, say, Magnoliopsida, which would have been equally correct, but more pleasing). Some even went so far as to publish Embryopsida as a 'better' name.