Flag for Taxon: American royal fern (Variety Osmunda regalis spectabilis)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| astrobirder | American royal fern (Variety Osmunda regalis spectabilis) |
swap taxon into the newly(?) created species Osmunda spectabilis |
Feb. 9, 2020 21:46:45 +0000 | bouteloua |
committed taxon changes |
Comments
I haven't jumped on this, because I don't know how to distinguish them except by geography, but yes, @jsmetzgar showed about 5 years ago that var. spectabilis warrants specific rank, and the North American floras have been following that. O. spectabilis is in POWO, so we'll avoid a deviation.
ok! Osmunda spectabilis got added to iNat somehow, so one needs to be merged.
I'm OK with the swap (recognizing O. spectabilis) but this will affect a large number of observations...we also need to make a more elaborate taxon split, atlasing a new O. regalis to Eurasia and O. spectabilis to North America, splitting the old O. regalis between the two.
This popped up in my observations today - any further movement on it?
Hey @choess just saw you were working on the atlas for O. spectabilis. I had had an old, draft taxon split, but it was going to make a new O. regalis - now that we have the new tool to use an input as an output for splits, I updated the taxon changes.
Should be good to go from the O. regalis side if you want to do a quick review.
https://www.inaturalist.org/atlases/15358
https://www.inaturalist.org/atlases/28295
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/76310
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/76309
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxon_changes/76311
I tweaked the O. regalis s.s. atlas slightly. I think we're good to go--the African observations are probably O. abyssinica or O. hilsenbergii, Asian are O. japonica or possibly something else.
The last global monograph of this group was Bobrov in 1967; he did quite a bit of splitting that was largely ignored, but some of that's been backed up by genetics. It will probably be a while before the African taxa get sorted out by the scientific community, so letting them bounce up to Osmunda isn't a big deal IMO.
(3 hours after taxon changes committed - iNat's still churning through the ID updates)
Glad to see this change!
OMG ya'll are the best. Thanks!
What are some of the morphological differences between these species? And how do we know that none of the North American observations are of the introduced European species, which is a popular garden ornamental?
oh yuck, so now all of my Osmunda regalis in North american got changed to something else? I just found this when I had O. regalis listed as a life list first. I agree with others here that splitting these based only on locatipn is kinda a bummer. We still use O. regalis in Vermont and Haines 2011 uses regalis (not that I go to all their taxonomy). This just creates a database crossover mess. But i suppose probably too late to ask to have it put back. Sigh.
Right, iNaturalist should not be carrying both this designation and Osmunda spectabilis. Choose one please. plantsoftheworldonline.org lists O. regalis spectabilis as a synonym of O. spectabilis.