Greg, An interesting contribution on species but there are a few aspects that trouble an amateur orchidophile like me.
Natural species have variation (Darwin n all that). We know that some variations confer better opportunities for success under changed environmental conditions while others more or less guarantee failure and the plant falls by the wayside. If you exclude artificially selected and propagated 'species', how do you know that you aren't excluding some that would fall within the successful part of such a spectrum of variation and be quite successful back in the wild? After all, how often do we encounter selected obscure introduced species, grown in an 'artificial' or strange environment (like many orchids and other exotic plants - and animals!) and then accidentally (or even deliberately) let loose to create mayhem in an unprepared ecosystem? Are these no longer the species they were? Who knows, if I let my Stanhopea tigrinas loose on the world they could be dangling from all the trees in the UK (savour the thought!) in a year or two . . . . or not. But if they took off, wouldn't they still be Stanhopea tigrina, albeit up the wrong trees? I would go along with you in that there are sometimes naively simple assumptions by some protagonists of 'reintroduction'. If the plant has been dependent on, say a specific pollinator - which may also have become extinct then there may be little success with reintroduction - but I get out of my depth at this point. The other problem with pronouncements on what are and what aren't species is that rarely can we put the 'viably-interbreeding-population' definition to the test, - especially if the geological time-factor is included. . After all, most of the time in most places most of us mostly use the morpho-species concept. Basically, if it looks the same it is the same. We should remember that, although a taxonomic scheme truly reflecting evolution would be nice to have, in fact we have the results of a human activity, designed as much for our convenience as for anything else and only as perfect as we have been able to make it -and subjectively at that until DNA techniques are kitchen-sink simple!.Remember too, that much of early (and valid) taxonomy was conducted by those without knowledge of or belief in the Darwinian evolutionary process. (Bet that'll bring on the taxonomists eh?) John Stanley
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