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Old 10-09-2006, 04:29 PM   #12 (permalink)
JoeReal
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Default Re: Scientific names

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gabe15 View Post
Joe,
I do not understand what you mean by "they outwardly behave like species", because edible bananas do not. They are for the most part sterile and incabable of producing any seed that is true to type.
Well, if a plant has its own unique characteristics and able to propagate itself and maintain that characteristic, that to me, is outwardly a manifestation of being a specific kind of plant. Thus specific characteristics make up the plant or group of plants, from the word species. Biology has a much different defintion however, and this includes the clause "are able to breed among themselves, but are not able to breed with members of another species". Does it imply that the thousands of plants that cannot sexually reproduce should not have a species name, and should be considered anomalies? From another point of view, sexual reproduction can be considered a great anomaly, as per evolutionary theory.

For a typical layman, if a plant can be propagated and able to retain its own specific characteristics, it should be treated as a separate distinct kind of plant, regardless of its genetic make-up. That is how as a hobbyist I would treat them. For me, it is more important that you can propagate the plants but maintain their identities, rather than what their parents are, their genetic make-up or whether they are sterile or not. There are several ways to coax the plants to form mutants and to select from these, those that we like, especially the sterile ones.

Thus the ability to sexually reproduce nor sexually recombine do not fit well with plants that can be asexually propagated. For me, it is not a requirement to be fertile or able to reproduce sexually to become a distinct plant. Thus the species definition do not fit a lot of plant cultivars that we are growing today, and there are thousands of plants that have propagated and even evolved or mutated through time without sexual recombination but whose genetic make up are vastly different than their parents. For animals, if a certain species has specialized and could no longer mate with its former group, then it has become a separate species. This definition and Darwinian definition of speciation will not surely work with plants. Not all plants would even fit this paradigm, there are some plants in nature that are always mutating as a way to cope up with radically changing environments. There are too many oddballs and curved balls thrown by nature or from discoveries we made that we cannot generalize many things.

Last edited by JoeReal : 10-09-2006 at 04:37 PM.
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