My problem in PDB

Dave can you fix the mess I made in Hosta plantaginea it won't show under the letter p ??

It's fixed :) It still won't show under the letter P because plantaginea isn't a cultivar name...

GO-VOLS Thanks for the quick answer but I don't understand.
From the Hosta Handbook by Mark R. Zilis

As an example , the name Hosta Plantaginea signifies a plant in the Hosta genus, with the specific epithet of PLANTAGINEA. Togather these two words comprise a species name.Hosta Plantaginea.

Dictionary of botanty by Little & Jones 1980
"cultivar" is defind as ;
"A contraction of cultivated variety". It refers to a plant type within a particular cultivated species that is distinguished by one or more characteristics; horticulturally, such plants are of considerable economic importance.

Why is a plant like Antioch listed ? What is differant with a plant like Plantaginea. Zilis book devotes 6 pages to the describing this hosta . If plantaginea is not the cultivar name what is the cultivar name ?

Inquiring minds want to know *LOL*
Greenw@@d

Oh, boy. Let's see if I can answer your question(s) without digging myself into a nice deep planting hole.

Someone recently posted a nice analogy to taxonomy levels - they likened it to an automobile. As I recall it went something like this:

Think of family as a brand of car - Ford, General Motors, etc.
The genus would be more specific - Ford, Lincoln, etc.

The species is even more specific, perhaps a Ford Expedition vs. Explorer, for example. (They have certain similarities, but enough differences to give them their own species name.)

The cultivar would then be roughly equivalent to different colors and features of the vehicle.

Some plants, and this definitely holds true with Hostas, have many cultivars and there isn't widespread agreement on which species go with each cultivar. (Which is one of the reasons you see few cultivars with species information in the PDB - I was given fair warning that it's contentious, so I left well enough alone :)

And for some plants, the species is also cultivated as a legitimate plant, separate and distinct from other species and cultivars by virtue of its characteristics (height, bloom time, flower color, leaf veins, leaf color, size, etc.)

H. plantaginea does not have - to the best of my knowledge - a cultivar name. That's why you'll sometimes hear gardeners refer to a cultivar being "taller (hardier, more compact, etc.) than the species" - in this case, the species would be H. plantaginea. Some cultivars may list a species, but I'm not going there with Hostas :)

Go_vols
All this is over my head.. I just have one question. IF
Plantaginea doesn't belong under "P" for Plantaginea where does it belong & by what name? (greenwood has nothing to do with this question.. it is mine *LOL*

GO-VOLS Your post has not convinced me as I have a Hosta plantaginea in my garden that I would consider trading for your Ford Lincoln !! But I don't think I will lose any sleep over it. Thanks for the info.
Greenw@@d

The browse by cultivar link only shows entries who have the "Cultivar" field filled out.

Clearly, a Funkia Hosta plantaginea sans cultivar won't show up, however it will if one does a browse-by-genus on Hosta, or searches for plantaginea (or part thereof).

To allow that plant to appear in the P list would be inconsistent with the design of the database, and can confuse people. Now, if one was comfortable saying that it was Hosta 'Plantaginea' (Hosta plantaginea) then I think we might be able to accomodate. :)

Dave

This plant classification thing is a real can of worms sometimes. I understand the the decision is to use separate entries for each cultivar, but sometimes that seems like overkill when only the colors are different. If the requirements, growth habits, and stats are the same, why not just lump them together.

I got into this about Wave Petunias. There is a whole series of them... Purple, Rose, Lilac, Cherry, Tidal, Pink..then there are the doubles, and then there are the variegated... but they all have the same foliage, growing habits, environmental needs. Wouldn't the color differences be aptly covered in the pictures?

I suppose I've completely gotten away from the issue of Hostas, but it looks like that might be a welcome relief at this point!

Weezin, I chatted with Baa about this issue, which I think you and she recently discussed, too. And I really do see your point about overkill - especially after going through the process of creating some of these entries. However, two (somewhat technical) issues have led me to conclude I should stand in defense of the long list of wave petunia cultivars (lolol):

1. When someone searches for Cherry Wave Petunia (for example), and we have only "Wave Series Petunia" in the common name field, they'll never find the entry or the PDB. I don't *think* Google or other search engines index our captions. But even if they did, that leads me to reason #2...

2. Captions aren't shown on the main page of an entry. So matching up the particular cultivar with the photo becomes a process of opening each photo to see what it is. Assuming the contributor places the name in the caption - which is a big assumption, and would more often than not be a false one.

Now we *could* ask Dave to add a field for cultivar name in the photo upload form. But it would be redundant and confusing for the cultivars that aren't combined in a single entry. And the PDB wouldn't have any way of knowing whether each entry was a combined entry, or a single cultivar entry :(

So unless our discussion uncovers another approach, I think we'll continue to add each cultivar separately. As cultivars fall out of favor and are eventually discontinued, we'll have to decide what to do with those.

Go_vols, when Greenwood made his journal he must have done something wrong & it doesn't show public which is what it should be. How can we correct that? He has his nose in the TV watching the Braves ball game right now & is too busy to write *LOL*
Sugar

Go_Vols: If memory serves, the cultivars used to appear at the bottom of the entries with available space for comments and a photo. Was this not acceptible?

As far as being able to find the entry in Search, anyone who entered Cherry Wave Petunia deserves what he/she gets, just as I would not expect to find White Bleeding Heart or Pink-tinged Orangish Calendula. I'd start with Dicentra or Bleeding Heart, or Calendula and continue the search from there.

Concerning our Search, I entered Campanula glomerata and it said I was being too specific. That seemed rather odd to me, but I entered Campanula and followed from there. However, when searching so generally, it seems to include any other type of plant that has a similar name. For instance, when I searched for catmint, I ended up with many, many cultivars of daylilies that apparently had "mint" in the cultivar name.

I guess it's easy to be critical when I'm not the one dealing with this muddle. My thought was to make it easier rather than harder. However, we won't know what works until we try it, so I'll enter data by the cultivar, and if it is not already entered as a cultivar, I'll start a new entry. I have this need to organize but lack the ability to truly do it, so I should just accept that and quit nit-picking with what better minds have done. Thanks, Go_Vols... you're a patient person.

WZ

I see your point re cultivars such as 'series' cultivars but not on the general cultivar issue. Many cultivars can be quite different to the species and often worthy of a separate mention, many of the Aquilegia vulgaris cultivars come to mind on this.

Another point worthy of mention on general cultivars is some are not as hardy as the species or as the nurseries would have us believe. In fact it's become common practise for some of the larger nurseries to release a plant after only a short period of testing. This means that the nurseries then pay less out on research but still find out how hardy, floriferous etc each variety is by the complaints or thanks they get from customers! This is a practise I disagree with and now refuse to pay out for a *New Introduction* (with the exception of Dahlia Dark Desire which I know will not be hardy here). One example of this is Digitalis purpurea subspecies Heywoodii 'Silver Fox' which has consistantly proved to be not hardy in all but the very mildest of climates ... many have been deeply disappointed after paying xxx amount for a plant or seeds.

One last point re cultivars ... some cvs are of uncertain or complicated parentage, very often the only real information we can tenetively rely on is the fact that it is different to most species available. In the case of Lobelia Queen Victoria there are several possibilities to the parents and a lot of poor information which would have us believe it is a variety of one species. In this case most books such as those from the RHS and AHS will state only that the plant is L. Queen Victoria. There would be a lot of confusions if someone made an entry for L cardinalis stating QV is a cultivar of this and then another stating it's a cultivar of L splendens.

As for nit-picking (being of that disposition myself *G*) sometimes it does pick up something that could be changed or improved so I for one (and not speaking for anyone else) am always willing to discuss a nit pick or 5!