Too many genera or too few species?

I was intrigued to notice today in the introduction to PlantFiles, the following figures:
Currently entries are from 346 families, 3,350 genera, 3,372 species, and 62,112 cultivars.
Since every genus must surely have at least one species, the presence of 3350 genera and only 3372 species seems surprising. I can think of several genera with as many as 22 species in PlantFiles, any one of which would account for the difference between these figures.
I suspect that the number of species in the PlantFiles is well in excess of 3372!

I suspect it's because many of the cultivars don't have the specific epithet with them (due to them being hybrids or unknown/difficult ancestory). Many in the special databases like Iris and Rosa won't have the specific epithet, hence the seemingly small number of species plants.

Since the plural of cactus is cacti, the plural of genus should be geni, not to be confused with genie.
Those learned philologists are such genii.

but Debby, these genera like Iris and Rosa will both have some species as well as the numerous cultivars. To account for the close match of genera and spcies, there would have to be a large number of genera for which there were many cultivars but no actual species. Are the counts correct Dave?

Hmm Ulrich, you're mixing your declensions, genus is a third declension not a second. I'm not even going to mention cacti *G*


Kennedyh
I don't know then, the only other reason I can think of is if it's counting specific epithets such as officinalis together rather than as an entire species? I'm sure Dave or Terry will be along with the answer, I'm just blowing hot air ;)

Debby, that was my thought too. But I suspect that Dave's handy-dandy calculator is off, considering we have more than 10,000 specific epithets (which means there should be more species than that, since some epithets are used by several genera.

Ahhh, that would explain it!

I updated my counting script. 343 families, 3,348 genera, 10,566 species, and 62,157 cultivars. Does that sound better?

dave

Well, that works as long as that count is counting correctly.

Here's an example: albiflora is used in 10 entries: http://davesgarden.com/pf/b///albiflora/ Does your count include all ten species (unique genus + specific epithet combinations), or does it count albiflora as one species?

What?! I've never held myself to such a high standard of quality. ;-)

The counting until this morning was doing this: Grab all the Genus + Species combinations, and then count how many unique entries I end up with.

I changed it this morning to just count all the unique species fields we have.

Now that I look at it, however, they should be almost 20,000 unique Genus+Species combinations. Let me look further into this.

Dave

Sorry. Diplomacy and tact don't appear in until I've drained my second cup of joe - I'm about two-thirds the way there ;o)

Ugh. I found the problem and it was a little buggy in my script. I have fixed it, so now instead of counting the unique species field (which is around 10,000) I'm now showing unique genus+species combinations, which is close to 20,000.

343 families, 3,348 genera, 19,258 species,

dave

Many thanks. (And humble apologies for unintentional gruffness ;o)

None needed. I was a little snappy coming back, but it was done with a smile on my face. :)

dave

kennedy I'm really glad you found this error. And I was really interested reading the thread too. Managing a couple of my own web sites, I find it's amazing how easily we web managers can overlook these kinds of things....and I'm always very grateful when someone points them out (even if it does take me a long time and a lot of aggravation to finally figure out how to fix the problems ;-).

-Julie