THE TAXONOMY OF CULTIVATED PLANTS

J. McNeill
At the beginning of this Fifth International Symposium on the Taxonomy of Cultivated Plants, comparison is made with the first symposium held in 1985 and the progress leading to the establishment of an International Association for the Taxonomy of Cultivated Plants is noted. The establishment of such a body presumes that cultivated plants exhibit features that make the understanding and communication of their diversity distinctive from those of other plants. What are those features and what process or processes are responsible for their existence? The process of domestication is that particularly associated with cultivated plants, but cultivated plants are not excluded from many of the processes of evolution that operate on plants in the wild. What, if anything, really distinguishes the differential effect of those processes, and how do they impact on variation in cultivated plants as opposed to others, and how should the classification and nomenclature of cultivated plants reflect the processes and patterns involved in their evolution and domestication? These questions are considered in the context of the history of the development of cultivated plant taxonomy and nomenclature, with examples of applications of existing techniques for recognition of the nature and patterns of variation. Consideration is given to future possibilities in understanding the nature of variation in cultivated plants and better expressing its patterns.
McNeill, J. (2008). THE TAXONOMY OF CULTIVATED PLANTS. Acta Hortic. 799, 21-28
DOI: 10.17660/ActaHortic.2008.799.1
https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2008.799.1
domestication, evolution, ICBN, ICNCP, nomenclature
English
799_1
21-28

Acta Horticulturae