Talk:Abutilon × hybridum

File:Abutilon ×hybridum Patrick Synge.jpg to appear as POTD soon
Hello! This is a note to let the editors of this article know that File:Abutilon ×hybridum Patrick Synge.jpg will be appearing as picture of the day on December 5, 2010. You can view and edit the POTD blurb at Template:POTD/2010-12-05. If this article needs any attention or maintenance, it would be preferable if that could be done before its appearance on the Main Page so Wikipedia doesn't look bad. :) Thanks!  howcheng  {chat} 17:27, 2 December 2010 (UTC)

Article rewrite
I've made major changes to the article, with references, according to some fairly decent sources. Hopefully this will help highlight why this might be better merged into the main article. The two common names are removed because the majority of sources place them at the genus name, not here. I've reduced the description section, since there is definately zero consensus in the sources on this. It varies as widely as all Abutilon hybrids (which is the real description of these, although I didn't go that far in the article). I did include a size description, which highlights the disagreement in the sources. The genetic study info had to go, since it was a bogus study by one college kid with one pack of mail-order seeds. He had no idea that his packet was not at all representative of the whole group, and did not adress the issue at all. The "disappeared from horticulture for many years" claim had to go since it was applied by the source to the genus, not this group. The pictures went because there is no way to say that they are representative of the group; no one could ever know that since the group is not defined; they would also incorrectly imply validity to the species. The taxobox implies that they are valid species, which these are not. Also, the more reliable sources put them at a cultivar group, instead of even an invalid species, and so for that reason also would not get a taxobox. Please feel free to add to the article, but be prepared to defend your additions with reliable sources. --Tom Hulse (talk) 05:42, 3 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I disagree with a lot of this.


 * There is nothing invalid about Voss's name, published in 1894
 * It is absolutely normal, all the time, for people to have difficulty knowing whether they have accurately identified a plant. Hence the invention of the type concept.
 * K.K. Pandey is no college kid, and the studies of the incompatibility system are, I'm stuck for any word except IMPORTANT, in plant biology.
 * "Hybrid species" is a concept in the code of nomenclature, and the title of the page should be formatted, and the taxobox restored, in line with the code.
 * Unfortunately, the original description that is in Google books, is not accessible. The citation is . IPNI says: "According to TL-2, this third edition of the German translation of Vilmorin's Fleurs de pleine terre is "virtually an independent work by¹A. Voss...". Nadiatalent (talk) 13:31, 3 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi Nadia. I dug up a copy of his original description last year, but didn't save it; I'll see if I can find it again and get you a copy. The point I was making at the afd was that yes the type concept is important, and that one of the reasons why this is invalid is that he didn't have a type; at least one that was supposed to represent any specific cross, even if that cross was unknown. It was published for multiple/mixed crosses, not just one unknown complex cross, and so would perhaps better be under the ICNCP as a cultivar group, not the ICN as a nothospecies (I don't think cultivar groups usually get taxoboxes here, but I'm not sure). Many authors treat it that way in the literature (Pandey said it was a group of cultivars). Another reason it wouldn't be a validly published is that it was proposed as a nothospecies, and he didn't postulate at least one of the possible parents per ICN H.3.3. Yes the type of work Pandey did is usually important, but this article is about criteria that apply to all members of a nothospecies or group. That's not the case with Pandey. His article is not relevant unless he had some thought about making his samples representative of the whole group, he did not. Ordering one packet from a mail-order nursery and assuming it was representative of a group as diverse as and, is not quality work, and unfortunately makes all his other great work not relevant here.

I think A. hybridum is a poor/invalid version of a cultivar group, but it is also often labeled a nothospecies, so I have no problem adding back the Italics to the article name. --Tom Hulse (talk) 20:14, 3 March 2012 (UTC)


 * I also disagree with the wholesale removal of information that included how the term is frequently and commonly used in gardening literature. I don't have anything more to say than that, because I don't have time to invest in a protracted discussion. First Light (talk) 02:48, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Hi First Light. Thank you for your input, but before you go, could I trouble you to identify at least one "for instance" that was incorrectly removed? I didn't wholesale remove at all, I was very specific, and I did carefully follow the average of reliable sources. --Tom Hulse (talk) 03:44, 4 March 2012 (UTC)
 * I also don't have time to spend on this now, but a few thoughts:


 * The type concept didn't enter the code until 1930, so Voss was operating in the tradition available to him (the Berlin rules, presumably).
 * The code of nomenclature evolves continuously, and the general process involved is to sort out and resuscitate old names, giving respect to scientists who have gone before. The code doesn't retroactively outlaw names because a type wasn't specified. Lectotypification/neotypification is the process that we use to sort out this kind of situation. It could happen at any time. Usually, someone studies the evidence available, including any specimens that Voss is known to have seen, and chooses as best they can.
 * Your argument that one can't buy a packet of seed and assume that it corresponds to a known species would apply equally well to spinach (in fact, the need to preserve a reference specimen of the spinach that they used is a criticism often leveled at the work of "moleculoid" scientists).
 * In genetic and molecular studies on a varied species (Homo sapiens, for example), there is always a taxonomic opinion involved in the statement of what species was involved.
 * It doesn't make Pandey's work inconsequential that he found a very real mechanism in representatives of a group that is a bit hard to pin down taxonomically. The complex ancestry of the group was vital to being able to uncover that particular component mechanism.
 * Pandey's and others' work on the genetic mechanisms of self-incompatibility is of such importance that people reading about it need to be able to look up a good description of what Abutilon × hybridum is. I totally oppose deletion or shrinkage of this page.
 * I worry about some of your "reliable" sources. Well-known scientists have been known to waffle on, throwing precision to the winds. Nadiatalent (talk) 14:54, 4 March 2012 (UTC)

Nadia, you are right, I'm sorry, lack of a type alone does not solely invalidate this name. In this case however, there is no possible way that it could ever receive a lectotype, since he wasn't specific about any specimens and didn't include a drawing; and a neotype can't be chosen (never ever) because it would be impossible to say which of the many different & complex hybrid formulas should be used to match the one he had. Surely you agree that today's "Abutilon x hybridum" have many different conflicting hybrid forumlas, and that the Code says there can be only one? Which of these (if any) did Voss use? We don't know and can never know because he wasn't specific about his specimens. You didn't comment on the most specific reason this publication is invalid, ICN H.3.3; at least one parent must be known or postulated, which Voss did not do. There is no grandfathering around this clause; it applies all the way back to 1753 and to L. himself. When we name a new hybrid cross, we are really naming the parents (together), so if we don't say anything about the parents, then we are naming nothing. There must be something back there to actually name, and with with Voss we have nothing, only confusion and gardeners worldwide slapping the "hybridum" label on anything they don't know the parentage of. As a former ICRA registrar, I have as much experience as anyone with the headaches this kind of confusion causes; it's the whole reason we have the Code in the first place. Since you are a botanist, would you consider looking at the whole problem from the perspective of the reason for the Code, avoiding confusion? It's then very important that Wikipedia not have a big flowery article that seems to lends credibility to this bogus taxon, and cherry picks a description from among the many conflicting ones, and includes genetic articles that wrongly claim to be representative of the whole taxon.

Regarding your spinich example, if a genetecist used one packet, and falsely claimed it represented the whole taxon, then his study would be severely weakened. This would be even far more true if it were of a taxon with huge variability, like Abutilon x hybridum. When other researchers come here to find out what taxon Pandey's study was about, they should not get just one of the many conflicting descriptions that we could cherry pick from the literature. Like you, I also am not happy that these sources are totally reliable/infallable, however I do believe they are the "most reliable", and I was careful not to cherry pick from them to support one view. Thank you for a fun & friendly discussion. --Tom Hulse (talk) 20:40, 5 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Hi Tom,
 * I'm sorry, but I find that discussion quite confused. The species epithet "hybridum" may be contributing to the confusion. It is possible to name a species, and then discover later that it is of hybrid origin or just a hybrid (the code doesn't distinguish between hybrids and species derived from hybrids), so for that reason the multiplication sign before a species epithet, and the prefix notho- can be dropped. Triticum aestivum can be called Triticum ×aestivum if one wishes; it is a named hybrid. Abutilon xhybridum is just another named hybrid.
 * When someone buys a packet of spinach seed, or buys a bunch of spinach at a grocery store to take back to the lab, they publish their results and others can try to replicate them. The question might come up as to whether they used Basella or Spinacia, but even if communication is clear on that point, they still might have dealt with a genetically atypical spinach plant. It is often impractical to experiment on a large number of individual plants, and in any case, the spinach grown on one continent might look exactly like, but differ genetically from the spinach available to researchers on other continents. Thus it is important to keep "voucher specimens", and for other scientists to replicate results (also, scientists often send one another seeds of their strain of the study organism, to help with repeatability).
 * When students come here to find out what Pandey's study organism was, I think they should get a discussion of the nomenclatural problems, not just "no reliable source has ...". That's rather a rude statement, equivalent to calling Voss's work shabby (without having seen it, I can't be sure whether it is).
 * If there is a validly published, legitimate, taxon name (and I believe there is), then I think there should be a taxobox.
 * It is quite common for lectotypes to be chosen from material that was never mentioned in a publication. The evidence used to choose a lectotype could be notebooks deposited in a herbarium, notes on herbarium specimens, or just the evidence that a person worked in a particular herbarium at the time when certain specimens were available. Thus I stand by my claim that it would be possible in principle to lectotypify Abutilon hybridum. It would be rather unhelpful of someone to do that without trying to at least makes some comments about the parentage, but I believe they could do that if they wished. Once a lectotype is chosen, one way to attack the parentage question would be to find/breed living examples of known parentage that look like the type. This was done, for example, for Ipomoea sloteri. That doesn't have very much to do with nomenclature, but is interesting science concerning speciation.
 * The code treats descendents of a particular cross as the same nothotaxon, and when very different-looking parents are crossed, the F2 generation is likely to be very diverse. I fear that horticulturists are subsequently treating A. hybridum as a "trash taxon", into which they toss anything that might look a bit similar, and even if the original cross was well-defined, some related crosses, perhaps those that share one parent with A. hybridum could get lumped together with it on the sales bench. If that is what is happening, then the question arises as to whether A. hybridum is the name that horticulturists should be using; perhaps it would be more useful to name a group of similar hybrids derived from any of a number of parental species, rather like the situation in orchids.
 * It would be easy to supply photos of Homo sapiens that look as diverse as those that you point to for A. hybridum.
 * I think that the aspersions you are casting towards K.K.Pandey are still unjustified: his science is good science, whether he managed to sort out the nomenclature or not. The nomenclature is a specialized question for people other than plant physiologists to deal with. Nadiatalent (talk) 21:50, 5 March 2012 (UTC)

I can see why you were confused about my statement above, lol, since I quoted the wrong ICN text. Sorry! Please see ICN H.3.2, not H.3.3. It says that if it was published as a hybrid (it was), then the rules say it must have at least 1 postulated parent published with it (there was not). This is not a technicality, it is really helping to prevent more of these junk names that can for all of eternity not ever be exactly assigned to a specific taxon, and there are no grandfathered exceptions to this rule for older publications. Please acknowledge that this settles the issue of validity.

Regarding Pandey, if he had chosen a pure species and claimed his study applied to all in that species, well that is at least in the ballpark of being true. Hybrids are different. There is too much variation (especially in a taxon that is really a cultivar group, not a nothospecies) to be making blanket claims without at least looking at the taxonomy. Sure his other science is fine, but for a complex hybrid with heavy variation, it's not relevant to our article unless he says why his work should also apply to the whole taxon (although it would be relevant for an article about pollen or pollen incompatibility). For instance, this sentence from our previous version article: "Because of the complex ancestry of this species, the genetic control of the self-incompatibility system is unstable"'. This is complete rubbish, there is nothing in the work Pandey did that would find or verify those claims or anything else about the complex ancestry.

You win on the lectotype. It is possible we could find a long-hidden notebook, and even though he was vague in publication, he could have been specific in his notes, and sure we could try to find the same original parents of a complex hybrid on morphology only. You and I both know that there is a better chance of Voss himself showing up with a live specimen... but sure, it's possible.

You were also right about how that one sentence seems a little rude towards Voss; I meant it assuming the reader knew Voss had said nothing about the parents, so I didn't mean to directly call him "unreliable" (although he actually was in this context). Perhaps instead something similar to "Originally published by Andreas Voss in 1896 without known parentage, no reliable source since then has settled their specific parentage."?

I agree about this becoming a "trash taxon", into which gardeners dump any hybrid they don't have a tag for. As someone who spent a lot of time battling plant name confusion, I think that "hybridum" ought to be outlawed by the code as directly confusing. It is assured anything with this name will eventually be a very confused mess. I think it was so even before Voss. This name was being bandied about by gardeners more than 40 years before him1.--Tom Hulse (talk) 00:20, 6 March 2012 (UTC)
 * Ah. In that case, I think the article title should not have the ×, which is how IPNI and others list it. I'd like to see a section of the page with a title such as "Nomenclature", and another on its use in genetic studies of self-incompatibility. Nadiatalent (talk) 13:34, 7 March 2012 (UTC)