Ushadi
Thanks for this new idea, I fear studying only morphological features of few
photographs won't help much. As you must be aware the important decisions
these days are taken on the basis of collecting data from thousands of
specimens/populations regarding attributes of morphology, anatomy,
embryology, palynology, and more recently DNA, RNA and proteins. This huge
data is subjected to sophisticated phylogenetic analysis to generate
phylogenetic trees, and the nesting of different taxa decides which two are
closer and how much. supposing out of 20 taxa studied 18 are separated by at
least 20 percent (or any other unit) and two by only 5 percent (or so). It
would be logical to merge these two. It is only these studies which led to
the merger of Apocynaceae and Asclepiadaceae, and separation of Liliaceae
into so many families. For more than 100 years or so Nerium indicum and
Nerium oleander were treated as distinct species, and no one questioned it,
but now that studies have shown that especially the molecular data does not
support this separation, the two are merged, and no one seems to question
it. The same has been true for the merger of tomato back into Solanum after
nearly 250 years.
Yesterday I went through the revision of genus Acmella, monograph being
based on phylogenetic trees and nesting of species to take his decisions,
and producing a good revision. I have yesterday provided key to nearly eight
species which were earlier considered as single Spilanthes acmella. It is
also uploaded on our website.
Yes this can be taken as a subject of thesis where the person studies all
species of Murraya. There are 38 names and only 8 recognised species. A
multi-attribute analysis mainly molecular of all these taxa can help to
decide how many clusters (and consequently taxa should be recognised.
Molecular data can some times throw interesting results. I had described a
new species Tragopogon kashmirianus, and was a tetraploid, intermediate
between other two species in Kashmir T. porrifolius (red florets) and T.
dubius (yellow flowers), both diploids. This hybrid was the result of
hybridization and subsequent duplication of chromosome number (amphiploidy).
since this species shared features of both these species and was independent
(setting seeds), it deserved a distinct species recognition. I published
this but was always in doubt, since a tetraploid hybrid between these two
species was already known in USA, under the name T. mirus. My worry was how
can same two species give rise to two different species through
hybridization and subsequent tetraploidy. Lucky for me a paper was published
in Botanical Society of America in 2006, in which 5 different authors (one
from Kashmir) did detailed molecular analysis on different species and
concluded that T. mirus and T. kashmirianus are quite distinct, and real
relief came to me when they discovered that T. dubius of Kashmir is distinct
from T. dubius of USA. The parents are not clear, but is clear that two
species are distinct.
http://2006.botanyconference.org/engine/search/index.php?func=detail&aid=544
. .
--
Dr. Gurcharan Singh
Retired Associate Professor
SGTB Khalsa College, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007
Res: 932 Anand Kunj, Vikas Puri, New Delhi-110018.
Phone: 011-25518297 Mob: 9810359089
http://people.du.ac.in/~singhg45/
On Tue, Oct 18, 2011 at 4:24 PM, ushadi Micromini <[email protected]
> wrote:
> Dear All:
> it seems murraya paniculata and m. exotixca is a hot issue... for what
> reason... I am not exactly sure...
> but it would be an easy test case to resolve...
> since it grows every where in indian gardens and woods apprantly...
> every body reconises it and has a story about it...
> its easy to look after nd follow...
> in a thread that went on and on... I hhad proposed the following ... but it
> got buried in the rest of the arguments...
> so I am posting what I said there here in an independent thread so that
> this proposal may get and independent airing... free of previous threads
> interpersonality discourse...
>
>
> its a purely scientific endeavor....
> lets start thinking.. at the end what may emerge will /may be totally
> different from what I wrote...
>
> that's ok too...
>
> Usha di: I quote myself from that thread:
>
> " Dear all:
>
> one thing I learned from studying cancer .... which is also a study of
> structure, biology behaviour...
>
> one thing I learned: is that we should try to keep an open mind...
>
> things may turn out to be quite different and may surprise the heck
> out of the learned minds, sometimes...
>
> nothing is written in stone...
> none of these floras.. or hortuses or whoever... went on the mountain
> and returned with a burning bush...
> these are not commandments from god... merely guidelines made by
> experts from some local university groups or botanical gardens, they
> study hard and make deductions
> BUT what they say should sometimes be taken as a guideline and not
> a commandment...
> I am sure they never came to India and saw these murraya plants in
> action...
>
> may be it behooves someone/ one two a few ... from our group to do
> that...
>
> somewhere in this thread I had even agreed to collect specimen and
> preserve and send for genetic analysis if someone was interested... or
> had the grant monies and lab equipment and grad students to do the
> research....
>
> so lets not fight ... but do something constructive...
>
> may be we should have a Murraya panniculata week.... once every 3
> months, that will cover the entire year's worth of the plants
> behaviour... leaf only, leaf and flowering stage, fruiting stage and
> dormancy in deep winter...
> which would perhaps be different in different parts of India...
> where people will take pictures in Prescribed format, with
> rulers /// and collect twigs, plant material fruits... etc...
> and press herbarium specimen... from all states of India....
>
> and may be ceylon ... kamini grows there too...
>
> LETS THINK ABOUT THIS....
> USHA di " end quote.... this was in this thread:
>
>
> http://groups.google.com/group/indiantreepix/browse_thread/thread/4eb0079f406077a2/df754f7be0e99bfa?lnk=raot#df754f7be0e99bfa
>
>
>
>
> Thank you
>
>
> Usha di
> ======================================
>
