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which_chick) wrote2024-02-09 09:07 am
which_chick) wrote2024-02-09 09:07 am
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A thing I feel like I should have learned in school...
So I'm doing cactus, right? We're all following along with the baby cactus thing, which is one of my Current Enthusiasms. And when you are in the realm of "buy cactus seeds" you don't get to do stuff like "balloon cactus" or "bishop's cap cactus" or even "golden barrel cactus". If you are buying cactus seeds other than generic mix, you're going to have to play Scientific Names.
Great. I am good with Scientific Names. I have a college degree. I know about Scientific Names from playing dragonflies and stuff. Genus, species. I am on board with this.
One day, dude on reddit posts a pic of his greenhouse shelf. On said greenhouse shelf is a clumping white cactus that is just the most amazing thing ever and I really want one.
Here's the pic he posted and you can see the clumping white cactus of delight at about 7 o'clock in the picture.
We're not going to go into why I like what I like, that's a rabbit hole of distraction. Take it as read that the clumping white cactus is just amazeballs and I totally want one. So I commented on the dude's post asking the identity of the 7 o'clock cactus.
Dude: It's a Parodia scopa. Pretty common in commerce, here, easy to grow, yadda yadda yadda. (He's in the UK.)
Me: Awesome, thanks! So I go to my purveyors of cactus and succulent seeds and I look for Parodia scopa. There is not any Parodia scopa. I looked very thoroughly. Bubkes.
Along the way, I determined that sometimes Parodia goes by Notocactus and not Parodia. I'm not sure why this is the case and I thought Science People all kind of agreed on what was what with the genus and the species (with some mumbling about subspecies and whether or not they really deserve to exist) but apparently in cactus it is different.
I discovered the issue with Notocactus/Parodia by way of Parodia magnifica, which is also (sometimes) sold as Notocactus magnifica. It's a fairly distinctive looking cactus and depending on the vendor, it's either Parodia or Notocactus but it's the same plant for sure.
Hunh. Okay.
So then I tried looking for Notocactus scopa because that seemed like it might be a thing. If Parodia magnifica can also be Notocactus magnifica, then... Parodia scopa might be Notocactus scopa, right? Maybe it's hiding from me in the Notocactus aisle.
I could not find a Notocactus scopa. And I gave up for a while. Couple of weeks. Bought some other seeds, started them, watched my current stuff grow on, etc. Still wanted Parodia scopa seeds. Found a few other sellers, nobody had it.
I was getting frustrated. It's super cute and (allegedly) easy to grow and it's not rare and I didn't understand why this was such a damn problem. I left the issue alone for a few more weeks. (I wasn't giving up, but I needed to let my frustration abate before I started throwing things.) And like a dog to vomit, I came back to it once I felt a little better.
Maybe, just maybe, I thought to myself, this is a Notocactus with some other name besides "scopa". So I went back to the purveyors of cactus seeds and started googling everything they had for scale in the Notocactus genus. (There frequently are not pictures of the plant available from the seller. You're supposed to know what you're getting already. Google will help you find pictures of the things so that you can tell what they look like.) And as luck would have it, I found the following: Notocactus neobuenekeri
I googled that. It's close. Not quite right, but close. Damn it. There is Parodia scopa seed for sale but it's from the EU and I don't feel great about that, either.
*sigh* Maybe I'll just have to wait until warmer weather and buy an existing plant one.
Okay, so anyway, now we're to the part I feel like I should have learned in school. Basically, genus and species are arbitrary decisions that are made by scientists and basically they pretty much just effing argue it out until there's a sort of consensus and people say "Seems Legit" and move on with their lives.
When a new cactus species is discovered (and this happens even now in our modern world), interested parties kind of peer at it going "What might YOU be?" and then constructing an argument and sharing their thoughts with other science bros by way of articles in journals and shit. Publish or perish, you know. The folksfighting over debating The Nature of the New Cactus used to (historically) base their arguments on stuff like seed capsules and flower shape/parts and so forth. Now, they frequently play DNA sequencing, which is more dependable, I guess.
Because the genus and species and shit is all arbitrary, there are "Splitters" who want lots of small groups of different genera and "Lumpers" who want a few genera for all cacti. The friction between Splitters and Lumpers in cactus land leads to names like "Parodia" and "Notocactus" being thrown around and sometimes not everybody agrees on what to call a given cactus.
Let's look at some examples of this shit beyond my Notocactus/Parodia issue, because I truly didn't know this shit was Going On In Science Land and it kind of blew my mind. Fun times, over here.
Example the first is This Plant.
This is a cactus, albeit a kind of weird looking one. It was discovered in 2001. It exists at a single locality somewhere in Northern Mexico. (A lot of cactus live in Mexico. It's like ground zero for interesting cactus.) Originally, because this thing was kind of weird, it was described as Digitostigma caput-medusae. People didn't know what to make of it. But, eventually, after some discussion, eventually it got lumped in with the Astrophytums based on flower morphology. It does not (except for the flowers) look anything like the other Astrophytums but it is an Astrophytum, at least for now.
Example the second is Mammillaria longimamma, which can also be known as Cactus longimamma, Dolichothele longimamma, and Neomammillaria longimamma. If you don't know what you're doing out there, for example, and you see Dolichothele longimamma Very Rare and Choice on Etsy or whatever, you might think that it's rare and choice because you've never heard of Dolichothele before and you can't find it easily elsewhere. But really it's a Mammillaria, not expensive, not super rare or choice. Interesting af, but not rare. The reason for the various things going on with the name of this plant is, again, Splitters and Lumpers. Lots of things that were not Mammillarias originally got lumped into Mammillaria and so here we are with that. Mammillaria is a mess, there are like maybe 500 species or something. Even in a perfect world, it would be... a lot. Lots of shit for the Splitters and Lumpers to play with in the Mammillaria world.
Example the third is the genus that USED TO BE Rebutia but is now ... Aylostera and Rebutia and Weingartia (comprised of the former genera of Sulcorebutia and Cintia). The reason that Rebutia was bigger and now is smaller is because now we can DNA sequence cactus so a lot of the earlier "by morphology" lumping that scientists did in genera is now turning out to be due to convergent evolution and NOT due to a common ancestor. So, those which used-to-be-Rebutia are now Aylostera or Weingartia. Simple, right? Sure.
Cactus taxonomy (the "discussions" about what genera should exist and which cactus go in which genus is basically taxonomy.) is one of those things that you might be like... "Don't they have all of this shit straightened out yet?" and because it is Modern Times over here, you might expect a yes answer to that question. But ... the answer is not yes, not yet anyway.
1. Not all cactus have been discovered yet. They're still finding things, as recently as 2022.
2. DNA sequencing is a thing now. This is proving kinda helpful but there is more work to be done.
You can read a pretty decent discussion of further issues classifying cacti at the wikipedia entry for same. But, if you just want the money quote, it's this one: "Classification of the cacti currently remains uncertain and is likely to change."
I honestly thought, prior to this, that shit like genus and species were pretty nailed down. Biology class in high school presented this stuff as pretty cut and dried, Kingdom Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. And people put everything in tidy damn bins and the World Was Organized, thank you Linneaus.
That's not how it is in the real world. I feel very... mislead about all of this.
Great. I am good with Scientific Names. I have a college degree. I know about Scientific Names from playing dragonflies and stuff. Genus, species. I am on board with this.
One day, dude on reddit posts a pic of his greenhouse shelf. On said greenhouse shelf is a clumping white cactus that is just the most amazing thing ever and I really want one.
Here's the pic he posted and you can see the clumping white cactus of delight at about 7 o'clock in the picture.
We're not going to go into why I like what I like, that's a rabbit hole of distraction. Take it as read that the clumping white cactus is just amazeballs and I totally want one. So I commented on the dude's post asking the identity of the 7 o'clock cactus.
Dude: It's a Parodia scopa. Pretty common in commerce, here, easy to grow, yadda yadda yadda. (He's in the UK.)
Me: Awesome, thanks! So I go to my purveyors of cactus and succulent seeds and I look for Parodia scopa. There is not any Parodia scopa. I looked very thoroughly. Bubkes.
Along the way, I determined that sometimes Parodia goes by Notocactus and not Parodia. I'm not sure why this is the case and I thought Science People all kind of agreed on what was what with the genus and the species (with some mumbling about subspecies and whether or not they really deserve to exist) but apparently in cactus it is different.
I discovered the issue with Notocactus/Parodia by way of Parodia magnifica, which is also (sometimes) sold as Notocactus magnifica. It's a fairly distinctive looking cactus and depending on the vendor, it's either Parodia or Notocactus but it's the same plant for sure.
Hunh. Okay.
So then I tried looking for Notocactus scopa because that seemed like it might be a thing. If Parodia magnifica can also be Notocactus magnifica, then... Parodia scopa might be Notocactus scopa, right? Maybe it's hiding from me in the Notocactus aisle.
I could not find a Notocactus scopa. And I gave up for a while. Couple of weeks. Bought some other seeds, started them, watched my current stuff grow on, etc. Still wanted Parodia scopa seeds. Found a few other sellers, nobody had it.
I was getting frustrated. It's super cute and (allegedly) easy to grow and it's not rare and I didn't understand why this was such a damn problem. I left the issue alone for a few more weeks. (I wasn't giving up, but I needed to let my frustration abate before I started throwing things.) And like a dog to vomit, I came back to it once I felt a little better.
Maybe, just maybe, I thought to myself, this is a Notocactus with some other name besides "scopa". So I went back to the purveyors of cactus seeds and started googling everything they had for scale in the Notocactus genus. (There frequently are not pictures of the plant available from the seller. You're supposed to know what you're getting already. Google will help you find pictures of the things so that you can tell what they look like.) And as luck would have it, I found the following: Notocactus neobuenekeri
I googled that. It's close. Not quite right, but close. Damn it. There is Parodia scopa seed for sale but it's from the EU and I don't feel great about that, either.
*sigh* Maybe I'll just have to wait until warmer weather and buy an existing plant one.
Okay, so anyway, now we're to the part I feel like I should have learned in school. Basically, genus and species are arbitrary decisions that are made by scientists and basically they pretty much just effing argue it out until there's a sort of consensus and people say "Seems Legit" and move on with their lives.
When a new cactus species is discovered (and this happens even now in our modern world), interested parties kind of peer at it going "What might YOU be?" and then constructing an argument and sharing their thoughts with other science bros by way of articles in journals and shit. Publish or perish, you know. The folks
Because the genus and species and shit is all arbitrary, there are "Splitters" who want lots of small groups of different genera and "Lumpers" who want a few genera for all cacti. The friction between Splitters and Lumpers in cactus land leads to names like "Parodia" and "Notocactus" being thrown around and sometimes not everybody agrees on what to call a given cactus.
Let's look at some examples of this shit beyond my Notocactus/Parodia issue, because I truly didn't know this shit was Going On In Science Land and it kind of blew my mind. Fun times, over here.
Example the first is This Plant.
This is a cactus, albeit a kind of weird looking one. It was discovered in 2001. It exists at a single locality somewhere in Northern Mexico. (A lot of cactus live in Mexico. It's like ground zero for interesting cactus.) Originally, because this thing was kind of weird, it was described as Digitostigma caput-medusae. People didn't know what to make of it. But, eventually, after some discussion, eventually it got lumped in with the Astrophytums based on flower morphology. It does not (except for the flowers) look anything like the other Astrophytums but it is an Astrophytum, at least for now.
Example the second is Mammillaria longimamma, which can also be known as Cactus longimamma, Dolichothele longimamma, and Neomammillaria longimamma. If you don't know what you're doing out there, for example, and you see Dolichothele longimamma Very Rare and Choice on Etsy or whatever, you might think that it's rare and choice because you've never heard of Dolichothele before and you can't find it easily elsewhere. But really it's a Mammillaria, not expensive, not super rare or choice. Interesting af, but not rare. The reason for the various things going on with the name of this plant is, again, Splitters and Lumpers. Lots of things that were not Mammillarias originally got lumped into Mammillaria and so here we are with that. Mammillaria is a mess, there are like maybe 500 species or something. Even in a perfect world, it would be... a lot. Lots of shit for the Splitters and Lumpers to play with in the Mammillaria world.
Example the third is the genus that USED TO BE Rebutia but is now ... Aylostera and Rebutia and Weingartia (comprised of the former genera of Sulcorebutia and Cintia). The reason that Rebutia was bigger and now is smaller is because now we can DNA sequence cactus so a lot of the earlier "by morphology" lumping that scientists did in genera is now turning out to be due to convergent evolution and NOT due to a common ancestor. So, those which used-to-be-Rebutia are now Aylostera or Weingartia. Simple, right? Sure.
Cactus taxonomy (the "discussions" about what genera should exist and which cactus go in which genus is basically taxonomy.) is one of those things that you might be like... "Don't they have all of this shit straightened out yet?" and because it is Modern Times over here, you might expect a yes answer to that question. But ... the answer is not yes, not yet anyway.
1. Not all cactus have been discovered yet. They're still finding things, as recently as 2022.
2. DNA sequencing is a thing now. This is proving kinda helpful but there is more work to be done.
You can read a pretty decent discussion of further issues classifying cacti at the wikipedia entry for same. But, if you just want the money quote, it's this one: "Classification of the cacti currently remains uncertain and is likely to change."
I honestly thought, prior to this, that shit like genus and species were pretty nailed down. Biology class in high school presented this stuff as pretty cut and dried, Kingdom Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species. And people put everything in tidy damn bins and the World Was Organized, thank you Linneaus.
That's not how it is in the real world. I feel very... mislead about all of this.