CactiGuide.com Custom Nomenclature

[daiv]

Ok, some of you were wondering about the mysterious login that was on the site for the last month or so.

Well, that feature is now out in the open. You can see the brown bar on the site that says:

CactiGuide.com Custom Nomenclature - System Default About This | Login

To learn more about it, click on "About This".

It won't be immediately apparent what this is and I expect it to take some time to catch on. We are quite used to the static nature of printed books and catalogs that we often don't think of things dynamically.

As of today, CactiGuide.com no longer follows Anderson's classification system, although, Anderson's system is still fully represented here on the site and soon the classification used in "The New Cactus Lexicon" will also be available (as of now, it is up to Gymnocalycium). I plan on also including Backeberg, Britton & Rose and smaller publications as well. And hopefully the input of individuals who are well studied, but may not have a published work.

These systems are available to be viewed on their own or in comparison to other systems.

I hope this system proves a valuable resource tool for everyone. It is just a beginning, but there is much potential - I look forward to us all having an increased understanding of cacti taxonomy as a result!

[CoronaCactus]

Very cool!
Thanks for your efforts, Daiv.
This is going to be fun

[peterb]

It's a way to openly acknowledge that alternative taxonomies have equal value with the day's fad/fashion/clique, so I heartily echo Darryl's thanks. I look forward to the end of my teaching year so I can delve a bit more.

peterb

[phil_SK]

I like this idea - it must've been a huge amount of work. However there are minor problems in converting Anderson names into, for example, NCL names. Here are 2 examples to show what I mean.

Ages ago, I provided 2 photos, of plants which I had received as Sulcorebutia menesesii and candiae. Under Anderson, these become Rebutia arenacea, which is how you labelled them for this site. Now, NCL treats both of these as Rebutia glomeriseta, whilst separately recognising R. arenacea. But if I log in under NCL mode, I still see these 2 plants labelled R. arenacea, which isn't really correct if you're following NCL nomenclature.

Another, again under NCL mode, is that there are 'lobivia arachnacantha' photos under both Echinopsis ancistrophora (where Anderson had it) and under Echinopsis arachnacantha (where NCL has it). Additionally, in the synonym list for E. arachnacantha are names like E. polyancistra, which may be synonymous with Anderson's very broad concept of E. ancistrophora but these certainly shouldn't be in E. arachnacantha.

I hate to be critical of something that I think has great value, and I can see no way of untangling this because of the way photos were labelled when they were received (and the way plants may have been labelled in collections where Anderson nomenclature was followed) but I think it's important that apparent 'new synonyms' are not created.

[daiv]

Phil,
Ian found a similar situation in Copiapoa and sent me a PM about it.

I originally had intened to use Anderson as a base, but for this very reason, I had to abandon that. The default classification is therefore going to be a "splitter's paradise". And then names will need to be combined accordingly per publication or individual.

This is going to take some work and I went ahead and launched the system now because I need this very sort of feedback. I will make the changes for the two that you suggested and it will reflect correctly in both Anderson and NCL. Note: I am still working on the NCL system and am only up to "H" so far. So Rebutia hasn't been touched yet.

In the programming, when two seperate names are combined, so are the synonyms. If they are not combined, they will be seperate. What it boils down to is that I've essentially got to work through and unset all of the names that Anderson lumped. That is going to take me some time to do on my own. I'm hoping that more folks will send me feedback like this so that I can get it done faster. Either way it will be done sooner or later.

This new feature is just the first step in a 3 step application that I'm working on. For the next two steps to be successful, users must have the ability to set their own nomenclature preferences.

I hope to have step 2 done before August and step 3 by mid-september. But I don't know what hurdles I'm going to encounter on the way so it may take longer.

[John C]

From what I have done with it, it looks great and is easy to use!

Thanks Daiv for this great addition!