Trichocereus returned to its own genus

[totemgoat]

"Finally, someone did the smart thing and decided to use DNA testing, as well as morphology to reclassify cacti genera and species, creating the most reliable taxonomy so far proposed. This was done by the French naturalist Joël Lodé who released his findings in the publication, Taxonomy of the Cactaceae volumes 1 &2, which is the most comprehensive work on cacti ever attempted. Thankfully, he has restored the Trichocereus genus to its rightful place as being distinct from Echinopsis. His new classifications for the Trichocereus genus, including the previously accepted names is as follows~" - Brett Lothian, Tricho Serious Ethnobotany

Link:
https://trichoseriousethnobotany.blogspot.com/2019/04/dna-evidence-restores-trichocereus.html?m=1&fbclid=IwAR17Rigbx4JG3cUrRuNUhTLWanwSDR2nsVwiGQVNuw0UbiZDPomzX5KBeOs

Joel Lode classifies T. pachanoi and T. peruvianus as subspecies of T. macrogonus which answers and raises some questions.

Not sure why this writing is yellow, probably something to do with me copying & pasting the above quote. 

Cheers,
TG
 

[ph7]

I always liked the Trichocereus name, refused to say the E word ☺ 

 

Very interesting about the sub-species of macro.

[Black Rainbow]

The tone of the blog suggests this is big news? I'm surprised I haven't heard more people discuss Lodé's work, especially as those texts were published years ago. I can't find full texts of Taxonomy of the Cactaceae 1 and 2, but I checked out some reviews and it sounded like Lodé used DNA testing as secondary, rather than primary data. So perhaps his findings are not so ground-breaking? Keen to hear people's thoughts on these texts in relation to Trichocereus.

[Strontium Dawg]

What's in a name? My cactus will be doing exactly the same thing regardless of whether they're trichocereus or echinopsis. We humans are weird.

[Freakosystem]

Taxonomy is why you got the right cactus that does the exact thing you want it to...

[DiscoStu]

who decided it should go into echinopsis in the first place?

now all of a sudden some guy decides it shouldnt be there so trichocereus is a thing again

until some in a few years time decides it should be somewhere else,

then some one else,

and someone else......

 

and so on down the line, what really changes?

plant taxononomy seems to be a bit of a joke, no?

[nothinghead]

It's more like a dark art than a strict science in a lot of cases. Don't forget that it was founded by a mad Swede who sent his students to their deaths so he could get some dope publications. On the other hand, like any sort of classification structure of knowledge, it has its practical value if you keep in mind that it is more a set of place-markers than a deep truth. It organises stuff in a way that saves us time, but sometimes blinds us to things.