Swap drafted but not committed. @leonperrie @chrise @rowan_hindmarsh_walls I see that New Zealand and Australian sources may disagree. Thoughts?

Centella asiatica is a very different species to our C. uniflora - both species are here, one, C. asiatica is a naturalised plant that escaped from the gardens of various immigrant peoples - it looks like this (least ways in New Zealand) http://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora_details.aspx?ID=4339, the other C. uniflora looks like this http://www.nzpcn.org.nz/flora_details.aspx?ID=2084. Centella asiatica has 2n = 18 chromosomes (certainly in New Zealand as I have counted the chromosomes of the plant I found wild - the one depicted in the NZPCN website). Centella uniflora has 2n = 76 chromosomes. These are not the same plants at all.

Please don't effect this change - we are seeing lots of changes being committed often simply because POWO 'say's so', changes that are being made on the assumption that the decisions made on POWO are 100% perfect. I can only speak for the New Zealand plants I know but as a taxonomist working on our indigenous flora I find it frustrating to see so many perfectly good species in New Zealand merged simply because one database says so, e.g., Geranium gardneri is apparently C. solanderi, Coriaria sarmentosa is apparently C. ruscifolia var. ruscifolia. These changes seem to take little account of the local knowledge, literature and work of those people in the countries from whence they come, favouring rather 'world checklists' written usually in complete isolation from the people who know these plants best.

From a conservation perspective such decisions can be hugely damaging, especially if a species is for example a highly threatened New Zealand indigenous plant, like Geranium solanderi, and yet a exotic, naturalised morphologically and genetically very different species G. gardneri is now merged into it. This decision makes potentially useful records of G. solanderi in iNaturalist meaningless from a conservation view point. Instead I have to trawl through them all to see what the species posted actually is.

Thank you at least for flagging this potential merge - way better than other autocratic decisions being taken of late on iNaturalist.

@reinderw @jon_sullivan @rowan_hindmarsh_walls @cco and @tangatawhenua may wish to comment further.

Wrong place, sorry. But another example of the same kind of thing!

From the comments above, keeping these species separate seems well supported and reasonable. Is there a way for a curator to enter a deviation from PoWO with an explanatory text to prevent a future swap? I fear that if I simply delete my flag, then someone else in the future will see the synonym in PoWo and re-flag the taxon for submergence.

I would add that I am keenly aware of the issue of the need to at times deviate from Kew/PoWO in iNaturalist. Pacific basin Scaevola taccada, an invasive in some places such as parts of the Caribbean, has been submerged into Scaevola plumieri by Kew, a species threatened by S. taccada. If that swap were done in iNaturalist, then there would be no easy way to sort these two species back out. Note that in this instance Kew is not saying that S. taccada is S. plumieri. Kew (Dr. Rafaël Govaerts) proposes to resurrect S. sericea to handle the white fruited Pacific S. taccada plants, but there is a specific name conservation under IAPT Article 41.4 Ex. 10 for the S. taccada name (https://www.iapt-taxon.org/nomen/pages/main/art_41.html Note the certificate for the site expired on 31 Dec 2019 and at present one has to dismiss a warning to see the page). And in iNaturalist the white fruited plants are listed under S. taccada. I know this is off-topic for the flag, just citing this as a example of where a deviation is warranted and that deviations will be necessary.

I've drafted a deviation, but it may need additional work. Feel free to add to/ modify.