San Pedro Terminology

[spice-of-life]

Hey guys, got a bit of a dumb question but it's doing my head-in so I thought I'd ask here considering the level of knowledge of the community here. My question is when referring to the San Pedro cactus is the scientific name ;

*Trichocereus Pachanoi

*Echinopsis pachanoi

*Echinopsis Trichocereus Pachanoi

Cheers-

Edited November 16, 2012 by spice-of-life

[flumsquid]

http://www.google.com/url?q=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echinopsis%23Taxonomy_changes&usg=AFQjCNG5qKxUwglh94YFngOV4PW5toOYoA&sa=X&ei=dsWmUJvzE6qUiQfK9YCgCA&ved=0CC8QygQwAA

Read taxonomy changes

Edited November 16, 2012 by flumsquid

[flumsquid]

*edit double post*

Edited November 16, 2012 by flumsquid

[Stillman]

*Trichocereus pachanoi (small P)

*Echinopsis pachanoi

Both names are acceptable.

But San pedro can also refer to alot of the Trichocereus Complex depending on where you live in Central/ south America.

ie T bridgesii and T peruvianus

Edited November 16, 2012 by Stillman

[Evil Genius]

http://www.shaman-australis.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=12211

But things will be changed back soon as soon as the smart taxonomists realised they were not so smart and made things more complicated. But i see where they were coming from so i will try not to beat a dead horse.

[Stillman]

but isn't T bridgesii = Echinopsis lageniformis

[shruman]

Yes Stillman they had to change T bridgesii to E lageniformis because there was already an E bridgesii.

[Evil Genius]

Absolutely. Echinopsis bridgesii is something entirely diffrent. Its a small clumping Echinopsis.

Edited November 17, 2012 by Evil Genius

[Stillman]

So maybe have a look at that link you put up EG it has it down as E bridgesii not sure if there is other errors, just thought I better point that out.

[Evil Genius]

Well yeah, seems the guy is a bit confused about some of the Synonyms and the correct species name for bridgesii. Cant blame him as there are countless synonyms around what makes it a bit hard to differentiate between cacti that have similar names. Site´s not entirely crap though and i sometimes land there when i search for a cactus on google.

Edited November 17, 2012 by Evil Genius

[Stillman]

Its a great site I just spotted that one and for our purpose here thought I better point it out. I don't know how anyone can keep up with taxonomy. I imagine its a constant shit fight.

[trucha]

Its really only a shit fight for those people who don't understand that there are no "correct" taxonomic names for plants just "currently accepted" names.

Part of the fight one might perceive is due to those names only being accepted when more than a minimum of people actually use them.

One of the problems with systems of group validation is that to for the dictates of the group to be validated its members must comply. Its easy for people to forget that what they are agreeing with are actually conventions not absolute truths.

To quote Russell Wagner "The plants don't care what we call them."

The bottom line about taxonomy is that it is not actually about the plants but rather is entirely about how humans want to describe and categorize plants. Anticipate that to be in a constant state of change as long as there are botanists with opinions.

To add another twist to the works:

Trichocereus is returning finally due to molecular work by three different groups of workers confirming Echinopsis sensu latu is polyphyletic and needs to be broken up.

An even newer name proposed for pachanoi is

Trichocereus macrogonus subsp. pachanoi by Albesiano & Kiesling.

Amusingly their first submission attempt to Taxon was rejected by one peer reviewer on the basis that it would change the name for an ethnobotanically important species.

If enough people uniformly start to use the new combination (and recognize Trichocereus as a genus again) then IT would become the new "currently accepted" name. If they don't, then it will not.

Edited November 17, 2012 by trucha

[Stillman]

I love your work trucha.

[qualia]

an echinopsis by any other name.....

[Foo]

ive found thatEchinopsis is rarely used on this forum.

Infact most places i see on the net still call Trichocereus, Trichocereus.

[zelly]

I love your work trucha.

 

trucha, re: the ad on page 12 in the 1998 Vernal Equinox issue of The Entheogen Review, are all of those works still available?

[Sallubrious]

What's the lowdown on a PC pach. as opposed to a non PC pach.?

My understanding is that the PC means Predominant Cultivar and they are distinguished by the colour of the wool/hair around the flower.

I have one about to flower that started out with black hair and it's looking whiter all the time, maybe it's just faded. Would I be correct to assume it is a PC ?

[Stillman]

http://www.largelyaccurateinformationmedia.com/pedro/pedro.html

this is a good read, truchas work I believe

[Sallubrious]

Thanks Stillman

I read that a year or so ago and after reading it, I wasn't sure what to think.

It seems like there is a lot of variability in the species.

Edited November 18, 2012 by SallyD

[trucha]

Thanks for the nice comments.

Zelly, I'd have to look at that ad and see what it includes but its probable they could be had even if not. Drop me a PM. Or email me at keepertrout@gmail.

I'm presently working on getting back into the printing business but how much goes to paper and how much to web is not clear yet.

On Echinopsis and Trichocereus the thing to recall is these were lumped primarily on the basis of both possessing stamens in two series and for both having flowers with hairs but not spines arising from the axils of the scales.

A translated version of the reference work doing it will be on line soon so it will be clear just how *intellectually impoverished* the argument being made by Friedrich really was. (The mad rush to ADD more genera of plants that Friedrich had deliberately omitted - like Rebutia and the rest of Lobivia - was even more impoverished).

The work by Friedrich doing this was at best marginally available and then only in German so no one actually called Friedrich on it.

Something to keep in mind is that for a taxonomic splitter detailed reasons and explanations in print are absolutely required. But for a taxonomic lumper all that is needed is to propose a name change in print by adding their name to the binomial and then have someone agree.

There are clear floristic differences that are more capable of neatly separating Trichocereus from Echinopsis sensu lato (not even counting the molecular work which in all three labs agrees they need to be split apart).

Work both documenting and detailing this is in progress but I'll drop a note as soon as its published or heading that way.

Which name gets used is a bit capricious.

People wanting to be seen as being in compliance with the dictates of the "Consensus Initiative" naming committee will choose Echinopsis (ESPECIALLY true consistently when they want to see their own work respected and accepted by those same people).

Sometimes there is a deliberate choice being made in the field using it that might not be clear. Ethnobotanists for instance tend to use trichocereus far more than echinopsis - perhaps due to their recognition of the indexing nightmare and loss of data accessibility that new synonyms can cause. Its easy to overlook how much gets lost when doing searches since indexing of scientific literature and data only rarely factors synonyms into the process.

If there are six synonyms I will need to do searches for all six in order to find the material I want for the one that is currently accepted. (As an example: Bufo alvarius has changed names 3 times just since 2006. It became Cranopsis alvaria in 2006, which was changed by implication to Ollotis alvaria later in 2006 and it finally became Incillius alvarius in 2008), Which means if I want to locate new material by anyone paying attention to that process I will need to look for Incillius and if I want any older material I will need to look for Bufo but still might want to check Ollotis and Cranopsis for any papers from people who fell in the middle.)

Its extremely easy for information to just get overlooked and lost by the assorted scientific indexing services (or by electronic search engines). Its their job to accumulate keywords and published data not to keep track of the never-ending series of proposed synonyms that may or may not be accepted. And really it can't ever be expected to end so long as there are more workers in the future facing the "publish or perish" reality of a career in academic science.

Or name choices are sometimes pure politics. For instance several years ago I helped with turning a thesis into a paper for publication. It was work done by Ogunbodede who preferred the name Trichocereus (as do I). Yet I was the person who proposed changing the name to Echinopsis in order to reduce one hurdle of getting the paper past the peer review process.

SallyD -- On PC versus nonPC that was all done just to try and illuminate a weird thing I did not understand. Your conclusion seems probable but really this entire area is still in the early stages of being sorted out so its wise for all of us to stay cautious with conclusions. Whether PC would best be taken to mean predominate clone or politically correct remains to be seen.

I try not to take any of this too seriously as its a lot more fun to explore taxonomy with a sense of humor. Its far more often just a lot of opinions than hard science.

The San Pedro book was my attempt to capture the state of the confusion as I was encountering it in horticulture. It is more of a look at the mess as it stood then than it is a work solving the problems it attempts to detail.

A LOT of good details and even some actual clarity in a few spots has surfaced since that book came out. A lot has also changed since then both in terms of available information and available plants.

The San Pedro book is therefore overdue for a revision but the producer of it (Moksha) still has so many stacks of boxes of inventory left that said revision really can't go to press without the risk of bringing financial harm to him.

Roy Mottram offered some really good points about variable species.

Hybridisation in nature

There may be those who perhaps do not regard the above as

a hybrid. Rather, some would say that it represents the natural

variability of a species. Unfortunately this is rather a

widespread belief among travellers to habitats, who seem to

find it hard to spot the natural hybrids. The consequence of

that is that they then unite the variation of the hybrids that

they observe with one or other of its parents, and say that

this is a very variable species, often to the degree that they

will include both parents under a single species name, united

by the perceived intermediates. Yet the truth is that without

properly identifying the natural hybrids, we cannot hope

to classify successfully what is left. The natural hybrids need

to be removed from the equation before we can define the

limits of variation of the species themselves.

Roy Mottram 2008 Cactus world 26 (1): 47-50.

If I'm recalling right there are around 3 dozen intergeneric hybrids known in nature? If that does not paint a clear picture of a house of cards I don't know what can.

Edited November 21, 2012 by trucha

[trucha]

...got a bit of a dumb question

 

I once had a professor who liked to say that the only dumb questions are ones that don't get asked.

If anyone has a question its likely that they are not alone.

[whitewind]

Hi trucha,

It's really nice to see that in print as I have long since had a deep confusion as to the naming process. Over the years I have picked up enough to come to the same conclusions that you have just put forth - that it's all convention, not set in stone, and a dog's breakfast. It sounds like the system needs a bit of an overhaul, and a lot more scientists putting work into the cleaning up (I have a friend who puts in enormous amounts of unpaid time to cleaning up scientific databases and helping publish information to the web). Unfortunately, it is unpaid time and as you say, scientists are under a great deal of pressure to publish new work, not fix up old. There is a lot of work to be done in this field, and it would be extremely useful, I think, if the processes and information gathering were much more obvious and widely available to amateur scientists like myself who would be willing to put in a bit of spare time and effort to help out. Of course, we can't help with molecular DNA work, but morphology and observations are all within our grasp.

[trucha]

And an important point is that careful study of the morphology just as often supports the molecular work as not -- at least when it comes to cacti. It was a bit amusing that observed morphology originally split Opuntia into multiple sections based on specialized features, lumpers decided to stuff it all together on generalized elements and molecular work carved it back apart again - largely into the pre-lumping divisions. Something similar is in the process of occurring with Echinopsis.

It is at some point going to happen to Mammillaria also.

Edited November 20, 2012 by trucha