Flag for Taxon: Genus Claytosmunda
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| burkhard_plache | Genus Claytosmunda |
there is also Osmunda claytoniana. One of the synonyms should be resolved. |
Jun. 1, 2019 01:17:51 +0000 | Not Resolved |
Comments
@choess let me tell the following: too many cooks at kitchen will spoil the meal, as too many curators mess up the system of taxon db.
This isn't even an iNaturalist problem, it's a systematics problem! Osmunda x ruggii = Osmunda spectabilis x Osmunda claytoniana. But if O. claytoniana = Claytosmunda claytoniana, O. x ruggii needs a new, published intergeneric hybrid combination, which would have to be something ghastly like Osmundclaytosmunda x ruggii, and no one has done that yet.
(Well, yes, it's sort of an iNaturalist problem in that someone has imported Claytosmunda. But this was poor planning on the part of the Osmundaceae working group or whatever in PPG I.)
You are right, C. claytoniana may as well have been imported, but not manually added by any curator.
I liked to prefer keeping in Osmunda, still when accepted as separate genus, and new intergeneric hybrid combination had to be created, i suggested a smarter solution. Sure, combination of genus names is !suggested!, but i refrain from taking such suggestions as strict "laws", maks no sense in my mind, taking freedom of people. So, i would reject the weird miscreation of ?Osmundclaytosmunda? but replace by something smarter like e.g. "Hybridosmunda" or "Mix(k)tosmunda", any experienced reader could easily get the meaning.
@choess any new thoughts on this? the resurrected Osmunda pilosa is in this genus as well but the name Claytosmunda pilosa hasn't been published either. does this just require further waiting?
@erwin_pteridophilos some name like ×Claytosmundosmunda isn't pretty, but the rules are clear per the ICPN; "Hybridosmunda" should be considered invalid for a nothogenus. https://www.iapt-taxon.org/nomen/pages/main/art_h6.html
Lieu et al. described ×Osmuntonia for the reasons you mention, Erwin, but unfortunately it's not Code-compliant, so we have to make to with ×Osmunimunda for the nothogenus.
I've been dragging my feet on this split because I don't feel that carving off Plenasium and Claytosmunda was really necessary, but I suppose we'll have to do it eventually. My current plan is to try to inject this into the PPG II process so that the new combination in Claytosmunda gets made as part of that work. Hopefully once PPG II gets done, the group can take over curation of ferns and lycophytes in WFO and we can switch to that as our taxonomic framework, which will be a good opportunity to resolve a lot of our longstanding fern flags.
I feel similarly about some of these segregate genera, especially with some being very small/depauperate and not grossly morphologically distinctive (and often not even necessary for maintaining monophyly) -- even things like Holubiella despite my bringing it up -- but they seem to be gaining acceptance among the pteridologists concerned? you would probably know far more about that side of it...
incorporating this into PPG II sounds very efficient, and it'll be really great when that can serve as automatic source for iNaturalist.
POWO has it as Osmunda:
https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:281799-2
POWO is very out of step on the ferns in general, to such a degree that I've heard that the most likely treatment on iNaturalist in the near future will be to align fern and lycophytes with PPG II taxonomy and not POWO, once the next PPG is done and listed on a computer-readable website. @choess knows way more than I do, but there is no chance of following POWO on this.
Plans for that are definitely concrete. Somewhere in one of these interminable threads staff has expressed support, at least in principle, for switching the taxonomic framework for ferns & lycophytes from POWO if a suitable website exists to switch it to. However, World Ferns is not going to support those needs (e.g., persistent URLs for each name) and phase 2 of PPG II, species-level lists, does not yet have a definite timeframe. It is not clear whether this would be supported through the PPG II website or changing curation at, e.g., World Flora Online.
I agree that it is generally not preferable to align fern & lycophyte taxonomy to POWO without discussion.
It looks like PPG II will continue to segregate Osmunda, Osmundastrum, and Claytosmunda. A rather technical discussion of the reasons for that is at https://github.com/pteridogroup/ppg/discussions/24.
Osmundaceae are, frankly, weird; the "living fossil" designation that gets applied to all ferns in the popular mind really does apply here, with a few lineages that have been morphologically distinct and diverged from one another for an extremely long time, but are not exceptionally speciose.
Until a decision is made to move or not to move, the taxonomy officially in place here is POWO, correct? Could "Claytosmunda" be inactivated in the meantime? Having duplicate active taxa is frustrating and confusing, and at the end of the day, we all know what the plant is. That is the gist of the community guideline for taxonomy, use-the-official-taxonomy-like-it-or-not, no? To keep everyone on the same page and prevent these duplications?
If there is unresolved hybrid taxonomy (that and the simple presence of [purported] inter-generic hybrids), it suggests the new proposed taxonomy isn't quite "ripe" yet. That too, is the point of following an authority if I understand it: to promote stability by being a little bit behind on purpose, not changing every two seconds with every publication, so these things have time to settle.
To me iNaturalist has good and clear policies and guidelines around how to handle this, but if they aren't being applied in some corners of botany, it defeats their purpose.
There are almost 70 observations under Claytosmunda claytoniana. These have to be moved, before taxon is inactivated.
Moved via user IDs, or via a taxon swap? If help is needed for the former, I can go through them.
that is not correct. have you read this thread yet? please, don’t take any hasty action on the taxon entries themselves. this is an issue largely being dealt with by @choess — there is a top-level flag on ferns that you can refer to about this matter. we are supposed to transition to PPG once a website for the alpha taxonomy is established. POWO is for various reasons not an appropriate resource for fern taxonomic matters and the current state of the field. the situation is much more complicated than you’re painting it to be (I say this as a fairly new taxonomist; Chris can say more about the specifics of this).
you are, of course, welcome to re-ID things into the Osmunda equivalent, but know that they will be most likely swapped into the Claytosmunda equivalent when a PPG-based framework is established for spore vascular plants in the future
That made me laugh... this thread has been active for over 4 years, and the fern flag is 5 years old; nothing about this is "hasty".
My hints of "taxonomy cynicism" may have clouded my earlier comment. I'm not saying the phylogenetic systematics of ferns aren't complicated; clearly they are, but that's not the point. My understanding is that iNaturalist has policies, guidelines, and a standardized taxonomy to deal with precisely these situations, and prevent this from being an endless argument about everyone's preferred phylogenies. The root issue of the flag is the duplicate taxa - two synonyms are currently active, and there is no reason for this to be left unresolved. (The species-level flag https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/503657 seems to point here.)
One thing that is very clear from the "greater" fern flag (ugh... https://www.inaturalist.org/flags/271039) is that the PPG transition does not have consensus yet, and that as of now, iNaturalist is still following POWO for ferns. I also checked the curator guide to make sure that is still current (as of 2 January 2024, https://www.inaturalist.org/pages/curator+guide). Also somewhere deep in that thread (double ugh) I saw that @loarie mentioned a number of duplicate taxa had been created and were in need of cleaning up. Well, the Claytosmunda split isn't accepted in POWO, and [if/when accepted] its only species currently exists twice (https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/63058-Osmunda-claytoniana & https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/895688-Claytosmunda-claytoniana).
Again, there is solid rationality for being a step or two behind the "current state" of the field (also partially addressed in the comments here: https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/211194/taxonomy_details), and this is a great example of why - a partial transition to an actively developing, not-fully-resolved taxonomic structure. Regardless, if a consensus emerges and a different authority is employed for ferns, then that adoption should be communicated as official, and existing taxonomy should be transitioned as an update, so it's clearly one or the other. But that has not happened. It shouldn't result in duplicate, synonymous taxa being created and left active simultaneously, yet that is what is happening here.
This results in iNaturalist having boutique, à-la-carte taxonomy, and now there are RG records for a fairly common species under two names. Practically speaking, this is semantic and silly. The fern is the same; it isn't like one taxonomy splits the species between the Asian and North American populations or anything else.
Regardless of whether anyone likes or dislikes either the current or the potential future taxonomy, why can't Claytosmunda claytoniana get merged into Osmunda claytoniana for now? If and when a "PPG update" happens, isn't this a straightforward taxon swap from O. claytoniana to C. claytoniana? I don't understand how waiting indefinitely for a possible future change justifies leaving this uncurated.
I won't touch the matter (entomologist, me), but I strongly support the proposal of @pantherophis. It is no big deal to unite the "taxa" per swap, and then to swap again into a new iNat "taxon" Claytosmunda claytoniana, when there is consensus it really is distinct enough to deserve generic status. Be aware of that species exist in nature, while other categories are just human interpretation.
the label of "hasty" refers to the over-quick curation efforts I have seen done, before wide input is solicited. I don't mean to imply you're rushing into this, just that it has been done in many cases. I am not referring to the length of time this has been flagged, seeing as neither of us have weighed in during those previous years.
I don't have anything else specific to say about this, and refer back to @choess -- as the only one here studying ferns! -- to address these matters. since taxon IDs aren't curation and are readily reversed or changed, there would be nothing wrong with going through the current C. claytoniana observations with that approach (really just a matter of personal prerogative).
Ugh, I've been holding on taking the plunge on this for various reasons. @jsmetzgar do you or anyone else have plans to give a proper name to Osmunda x ruggii, now that it's deemed an intergeneric hybrid?