Inclusive Herbaria :: Botany

Inclusive HerbariaIN the earliest days of Systematics more attention was stipendiary to cultivated plants and weeds than to wild species. The great herbals of the sixteenth century were by and large given over to field and garden crops and everyday weeds. Until well after(prenominal) the time of Linnaeus, taxonomists included both cultivated plants and wild species in their botanic gardens, in their herbaria and in their writings. Only by slow degrees was there oecumenic recognition that the methods which are so effective for the bulk of the worlds flora do not yield results of comparable efficiency when applied to cultivated plants and weeds. This detection came into being so gradually, that taxonomy as a whole drifted into its present speckle without any one taxonomist being aware of the drift and with tho a few lone workers (Oakes Ames, L. H. Bailey, O. Stapf, D. Chatterjee) attempting to fight against the current. We now find ourselves in an anomalous position. Ninety-nine per cent of taxonomic effort is devoted to the plants to the lowest degree interesting and least important to man. Surely matters are out of residue when in many of the worlds great herbaria there is not a bingle taxonomist who is devoting himself to the classification of cultivated plants and when the taxonomy of many of the worlds most important genera (Phaseolus, Coffea, Brassica, Cinchona, Hevea, etc.) is so imperfect as to be of little practical use. The gradual ending of orthodox taxonomists to avoid the classification of cultivated plants wherever possible was to begin with sound. Wild species could efficiently be understood by their methods cultigens could not. Since the development of the alleged(prenominal) New Systematics such avoidance is no longer necessary. The special methods of this sophisticated development in taxonomy are as useful in work out the complicated interrelationships of cultivated plants as they are in determine the course of evolution in natural p opulations. While it is usually untrue that the New Systematics derived its newness from the introduction of such techniques as cytology and pedigree culture from the experimental sciences, it would be more accurate to ascribe the change to new attitudes. The grizzly taxonomy was satisfied if it discriminated between species the new, desired to illuminate them as well. It wanted to lie with not only to which pigeonhole each entity belonged, but what kind of an entity it was. Was it diploid or polyploid, or did it include both diploid and polyploid races?