Quercus Question

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killdawabbit Christiana, TN(Zone 6b) Jan 30, 2010

Hi all. I've been checking plant files and see that according to them Q. buckleyi, nuttallii and texana are all synonyms. Of? Q. shumardii? Can anyone here enlighten me? Shouldn't there be only one entry if these are all the same tree?
I'm pretty new here so don't be too hard on me, OK? :)

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growin Beautiful, BC(Zone 8b) Jan 30, 2010

I think you've pointed out something that should be reviewed by PF Admins. Go to this entry: http://davesgarden.com/guides/pf/go/66226/ and click the "Report an Error" in the upper right corner. Sites that are used for reference: http://www.tropicos.org/Home.aspx , http://apps.rhs.org.uk/horticulturaldatabase/ , http://www.ars-grin.gov/cgi-bin/npgs/html/tax_search.pl , http://www.ipni.org/ipni/plantnamesearchpage.do and a few more to verify names. Explain what you've mentioned here, include references to the above databases and they'll sort it out.

Post #7511203
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ecrane3 Dublin, CA(Zone 9a) Jan 30, 2010

My guess is that at one point in time, Q. texana was known by those various names. They are no longer used for it and would no longer be considered correct, but usually the synonyms in PF represent older names that aren't currently recognized, but since not all sites & all nurseries keep up on the latest botanical nomenclature PF will show you the older names so just in case you run across something at a nursery labeled as Q. shumardii var. microcarpa, you can look it up in Plant Files and know that it's now known as Q. texana (otherwise if they took out that synonym, if you looked that up you'd get no hits).

Also note that at least on Q. texana (which is the entry I looked at), most of the synonyms have "var. something" after them. That is a way of subdividing species, so it's not telling you that it's exactly the same thing as Q. shumardii. Likely it has some similarities to Q. shumardii and was at one time classified as a variety of Q. shumardii, but then at some point the botanists decided that it ought to be split off into its own species so now it's Q. texana.

Post #7511926
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killdawabbit Christiana, TN(Zone 6b) Jan 31, 2010

Thanks to both of you. I was asking because there are some quercus hybrids that I'd like to list. I will use the links given by growin to make sure I enter them correctly.

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