[Taxacom] Centuries of usage of Nothofagus

[Stephen Thorpe]

Yes, "centuries" was inaccurate, but a minor detail. The important point is that Nothofagus in the pre-Heenan/Smissen sense had massive usage in not only the scientific literature but also in general encyclopaedic works that are very widely read by the general public in the context of education, etc. What Rob likes to call "the recent revision of Nothofagaceae by Heenan and I" disrupted all of that for the sake of aligning more consistently lineage age across related genera (as opposed to subgenera). I maintain that this is far too weak a reason to justify the disruption, given that genera don't have to consistently encompass lineage age, they are simply a convenient monophyletic group of related species, where "convenient" should take multiple factors into account, including usage.
Cheers,
Stephen

--------------------------------------------
On Fri, 1/6/18, Rob Smissen <SmissenR at landcareresearch.co.nz> wrote:

 Subject: [Taxacom] Centuries of usage of Nothofagus
 To: "taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu" <taxacom at mailman.nhm.ku.edu>
 Received: Friday, 1 June, 2018, 10:27 AM
 
 Hello Taxacomers
 At the risk of fanning fames (and of
 pedantry), I want to point out for the record that Stephen
 Thorpe's characterisation of "centuries of usage" of
 Nothofagus sens lat is somewhat misleading. Cheeseman
 treated the New Zealand species as Fagus in 1906 (Manual NZ
 Fl. 1st ed.), adopting Nothofagus sometime between then
 and  1925 (Manual NZ Fl. V2).  So I suppose that
 could fairly be characterised as a century of use. However,
 Cheeseman's concept of Nothofagus in 1925 included only
 temperate species. Names in Nothofagus for the tropical
 species date from the early 1950s and significantly changed
 the generic concept. It is this 1950s concept of Nothofagus
 (attributable to van Steenis) that needs to be defended
 against the recent revision of Nothofagaceae by Heenan and
 I. "Decades of use" might be more accurate.
 Best wishes
 Rob
 
 
 
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