[Aroid-l] Alocasia zebrina reticulata

From: Steve at ExoticRainforest.com (ExoticRainforest) on 2008.06.23 at 02:14:48(17909) Thanks. I thought we had this one fully worked out with Alistair and Julius' help but will recheck this tomorrow. I had a bit of a rough weekend medically but will hopefully be up to speed tomorrow. Thanks! Steve +More Steve, I hate to be pedantic (actually, I don't, it is all I have left), but if you are going to present the name as variety reticulata, that word (reticulata) should be italicized. It is just as much a 'scientific name as is the specific epithet or the genus name. So you would write Alocasia zebrina var. reticulata, but, of course you can only do this if this varietal name has been validly published. If not, to be strictly correct, you would refer to this as Alocasia zebrina reticulate form. This is what all the catalog writers and advertisers should be doing, not grasping for pseudoscience. I would also say (and thoroughly agree with Alistair Hay on this) that it is rather loose speaking to refer to this as a sport. If, as appears to be the case, it is just one of many forms that occur in a variable wild population, then the appropriate measure would be for someone to select a particularly striking specimen, verify by vegetative propagation that it has a stable appearance over several generations and then name it as a cultivar - registering it if I can ever get the cultivar registration program for aroids off the ground (mea culpa here for slow resolution in setting the program on a firm footing). By the way, there is absolutely nothing except one's own sense of responsibility to stop anyone tacking on a cultivar name to anything. Sad but true. It won't be a registered cultivar name until the formalities have been done, and then we would all be able to see what this cultivar should look like, and to whom the blame for it should go. I really am trying hard to get the registration program going and I have a registration form worked out that I would be glad to send to anyone willing to test and suggest improvements. Then I will eventually try to persuade the board that we as a society can make this work, and join the many other groups that do this naming responsibly. Derek -------------- next part -------------- An HTML attachment was scrubbed... URL: http://www.gizmoworks.com/mailman/private/aroid-l/attachments/20080622/5abf507f/attachment-0001.htm

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