In the Lord of the Rings fandom there’s a persistent debate whether balrogs, or Durin’s Bane specifically, have wings. The text in Fellowship is ambiguous whether what it is describing are literal wings or something else wing-like.
In the Lord of the Rings fandom there’s a persistent debate whether balrogs, or Durin’s Bane specifically, have wings. The text in Fellowship is ambiguous whether what it is describing are literal wings or something else wing-like.
alot of plants phylogeny is like this, they looked similar enough they are the same species, after doing enough testing, mostly mitochondria, choloroplast they actually are combined into one genus or move into another one. my favorite is mycoheterotrophs(plants that are entirely dependant fungi rather than photosynthesis), thismiaciae was originally though to have evolved in burmannia family,and then thier own family and then back again.
finally in the 2020s they realized even thismiacae is polyphyletic. so now south americans thismia’s are likely belonged to another genus entirely(they havnt done significant phylogenetic studies in the SA ones)(seperate from the ones in south east asia, australia, and 1 extinct one in usa which makes it very unusual for it to appear in america), thismiacae is now a full family, and afrothismia was originally included in thismia, until they genetic testing, its entirely “new family” interdependently evolved but related to the ancestors of thismia. trying to trace lineage of mycoheterotrophic plants is difficult because they lose thier cholorplast genes quite easily.
its only because they all looked very similar to each other, they were all combined into one family.
My friend is a palaeobotanist and recently tried to see if I (a microbiologist) could understand her presentation on taxonomy for ancient plants. I found it very weird to find out that the different parts of the plant retain the names they were described as even when integrated into the plant as a whole.
Like if you find a dino skull and call it ‘skullosaurus’ then somebody finds a femur and calls it ‘femurdon’ then later finds both in the same fossil, ‘femurdon’ gets retired and the whole thing is ‘skullosaurus’.
But with plants you can separately describe a female organ as ‘femonia’, a male organ as ‘maleonanthus’ and a leaf as ‘leafopteris’. Then somebody finds they belong to the same plant and not only do you just get to pick what to call the plant somewhat arbitrarily based on the organ prevelance, age, leaf or even an entirely new name but the original parts still keep their old names as separate taxa. I still can’t get my head around this ‘whole plant hypothesis’ thing…
oh yea i noticed the nomenclature/naming is very wierd for some plants. like in thismia, they have 5 different lineages, so they name it "section thismia, or another name based on thier morphology and later phylogenetic data. eventhough they have an established genus name,SECT geomitra, labiothismia,etc, which isnt a genus but it was originally named because thats the first specimen they found of a specific species. they call alot species phyllocladus, because the “leaf” is actually the stem, but its also the genus name. im guessing plants are complicated/ or look similar enough to each other you cant tell the difference until you do genetic testing, which they dont do on alot of plant lineages, like the mycoheterotrophs i mentioned, they are tricky to resolve.
and the genus is sometimes generic named like phyllocladus, xerophyta(an actual genus). oh yea paleontology is probably easier to resolve, if you can find extant or extinct animals that are similar, and just name it in the same genus.
orchids are also a fun family of plants , especially if you notice they are all mycoheterotrophs to begin with, its just the ones we see switch to full photosynthesis, but some are mixotrophs, and some loss thier chlorophyll entirely.
Its so confusing. My friend gave me permission to share her slides on it, its just a few but I think it helped me understand.
it is confusing, so it seems the name is based off the researchers description of the first and the last one who finds the new species, and feminize/masculinize the name too. it also seems theres not consensus as a standard for it, and can change at any time with new research. like with some plants like dracaena and sansierva, the latter absorbed into the former it gets more confusing.