We refer to botanical names here… used to be students were encouraged to learn scientific names because they were unchanging, constant, unlike common names that varied with locality. But with advances in science genetic relationships are surfacing and the old names are changing to a point of near confusion. When one mentions a name it is also advisable to quote the source. We learned our taxonomy from Morton Peck’s book (A Manual of the Higher Plants of Oregon) but recently we were advised “to put Peck on the shelf along with our other historic books and use Hitchcock and Cronquist (Flora of the Pacific Northwest) as a reference.” We have done so reluctantly. It may take a while to update the name changes so have patience.
tbc…
