Dear all, As a short answer to the earlier mails, - I stand by what I said in spite of the issues Garg ji has raised. Some reasons have already been pointed out by Vijay ji.
Before I proceed to give a long answer, I would like to ask all here some questions, a. What is the accuracy of identification that we are aiming for? My answer -for every plant I want a "scientifically accurate" identification. b. What is the reason for scientific accuracy? Because I see that handbooks and electronic databases, are now very commonly being used for ecological surveys, environment impact assessments, teaching, making books, making environment education material, species distribution mapping, natural resource management planning, ( For each of this- I can give an example from real life where it was done). All this work requires scientific accuracy of identification. Even many of the laymen (-a word I dont like to use) are experts in their own field where they use this knowledge, for example ayurvedic doctors who want to know plants to be used in medicine. c. Can we guarantee scientific accuracy of identification from a photo? But before that, what kind of photo? - a simple reporting picture (as are most on this mailing list) lacks most characters of id. I always try to point out what more is required and some like Dr. Satish Phadke are taking more and more pics with necessary key characters. For the tricky families, if a person can take a picture showing all necessary characters for the identification it will be possible to id even grasses,sedges, eriocaulons clearly. But with the characters in question, it will mean not only macro photos, but scanning electron micrographs for characters of nut. How many can do this? It is true that an expert, with his vast field knowledge can take one look at a specimen and tell you what it is. Rani and Anilkumar (I know both of them personally) on this group who know grasses well can do it, . They have certain field characters in their mind by which they do it, and they will turn out to be correct in most cases. But if others try to use that photo for more identifications from similar looking plants, they might get it wrong. Dr. S. R. Yadav, of Kolhapur university and his PHD students working on Poaceae of Maharashtra have developed an EXCELLENT set of photographs of grass genera, from which identification is easy and ACCURATE. I do hope they publish it soon. If one can get pictures like that, then I will not mind id from digital photos. for the rest of garg ji's points- > We can't wait for the perfect things (which never will in any case) to happen. - It is not perfection but ACCURACY being discussed. Even a bad photo of a tiger is enough for id. But with the greatest photo of flowering sedge it still is difficult to accurately distinguish Pycreas and Cyperus. > Our Floras only bulky technical details, hardly readable to a laymen. Well I agree only partially to this, some floras of present are not even good enough for a trained experienced taxonomist to use. But please remember that floras were and will be written for those trained in the subject. If a person trains him/herself to understand the subject (like many notable examples on this group) they will follow it too. BTW, any technical subject book is going to be difficult to follow for a person not from the background. I can hardly hope to easily understand medical textbooks, or computer software books, though I would love to diagnose my own sickness and write my own software programmes. >Or we simply stop photographing or knowing about Poaceae, Cyperaceae etc. Well this is subjective. Those who want, can continue to do it as it is, (and I attach the taxonomist's warning) or do it after reading up technical literature on identification of these species and try and get as many characters in the photo as possible (in that case my warnings become little diluted, depending on the nature of the photograph....) Also as I have worded the warning, - it says "confirm" the identification. A "confirmed identification" is where there is no doubt remaining about the identity of the species in that photograph. A simple identification is where there remains a chance that the identification is wrong, and hence use of that identification is at the person's own risk. The photo and subsequent comments on it can give pointers, indications, as I usually try to give (for less complex families), if I am not sure about identification based on the photo alone. Perhaps you should also put this subject on the mailing list of Indian Association of Angiosperm Taxonomists. It will be most interesting to hear their views. Regards Aparna --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "indiantreepix" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.co.in/group/indiantreepix?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
