Inclusive Herbaria :: Botany

Inclusive HerbariaIN the earliest days of Systematics much attention was paid to cultivated plants and weeds than to terrific species. The great herbals of the sixteenth century were largely given over to field and garden crops and perfunctory weeds. Until well after the time of Linnaeus, taxonomists included both cultivated plants and wild species in their botanical gardens, in their herbaria and in their writings. Only by slacken degrees was there general recognition that the methods which are so effective for the mickle of the worlds flora do not yield results of comparable efficiency when utilise to cultivated plants and weeds. This perception came into being so gradually, that taxonomy as a alone drifted into its present position without any one taxonomist being certified of the drift and with only 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 attempt is devoted to the plants least interesting and least important to man. Surely matters are out of balance when in many of the worlds great herbaria there is not a single taxonomist who is devoting himself to the classification of cultivated plants and when the taxonomy of many of the worlds virtually important genera (Phaseolus, Coffea, Brassica, Cinchona, Hevea, etc.) is so imperfect as to be of little possible use. The gradual decision of orthodox taxonomists to avoid the classification of cultivated plants wheresoever possible was originally sound. Wild species could efficiently be understood by their methods cultigens could not. Since the development of the so-called New Systematics such avoidance is no hourlong necessary. The special methods of this modern development in taxonomy are as efficacious in working out the complicated interrelationships of cultivated plants as they are in determining the course of evolution in natural populations. b andage it is usually assumed that the New Systematics derived its newness from the introduction of such techniques as cytology and downslope culture from the experimental sciences, it would be more accurate to ascribe the limiting to new attitudes. The old taxonomy was satisfied if it discriminated between species the new, desired to illuminate them as well. It wanted to know not only to which pigeonhole each entity belonged, notwithstanding what kind of an entity it was. Was it diploid or polyploid, or did it include both diploid and polyploid races?