I've come to such a stage that I cringe at seeing Chinese taxonomic description more than Latin or Spanish.

It's time to start with the thesis, with or without results.

It's time to prioritize and work smartly.

Proverbs 27:12
A prudent person foresees the danger ahead and takes precautions. The simpleton goes blindly on and suffers the consequences.

My researching has reach the stage where I start to dig out papers written in Chinese, Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, the language of Iran...

Yes.

And actually. It's fun. To try reading the paper in Chinese. To use language tools on Google to translate Spanish...

Library Books

One thing I love about doing research is going to the library and finding old materials. When I get my hands on bounded journals from 1914, from 1925, from 1948, my heart oozes joy and I get all sentimental, imagining who used these before. :)

I realized the collection we have in the NUS library is really good! :) Nice oldies in the closed stack. And they help us find documents we don't have too.

The Botanical Gardens Library has some goodies too.

:)

I love books and old stuff and libraries! :)

I am reading this book called "Rheophytes of the World" by C.G.G.J. Van Steenis. It is such a fascinating book. I really like the author's writing style. These older writers write like they're talking to you.

Check this out on page 7 when he tells of the difficulty in identifying rheophytes because herbarium collection descriptions are vague.

"Field notes should contain all information which can be observed on the spot, that is: precise locality and habitat, frequency, and altitude, and furthermore a record of the life structure of flower, fruit and seed that will be obscured or lost in the drying process (scent, fleshyness, etc.). Many labels fall short of this information. Not long ago (1977) I made an urgent plea to collectors to improve their field data. The time is past that plant collecting consisted of two actions: grab and dry. What we need is scientific collecting, with full notes on structure, habit and habitat, enabling the taxonomist to make use of field data not otherwise available to him. I want to emphasize this strongly here."

Wow! This is writing at its best. Can you feel he is trying to educate his potential readers? Surely many collectors, botanists, students would read this book and they're be educated by him, though the topic of the book is not really "how to be a good collector"! Can feel how strongly he believes in this!

Name Changes

Plant names are changed for three basic reasons.

1. Nomenclatural (to conform with the rules of the Botanical Code)
A change results in a new correct name while the former name becomes known as a 'synonym' and should no longer be used.

2. Taxonomic (as a result of a revised view of plant relationships)
"Taxonomy is the study of the principles and procedures of classification. A plant taxonomist reconsidering the classification of a particular group of plants has certain aims: to clearly delimit the taxa; to discern natural relationships; to produce a practical classification; and to ensure that plant names are correctly applied in relation to the type specimens." (Oh, so this is what Berg's been doing! :))

3. to correct a misidentification or misapplied name
"Plant identification is the act of determining the name of a plant (botanists actually refer to the is formal process as 'determination').
Misidentification-the act of giving an incorrect name to a plant.
Misapplication- the perpetuation of names resulting from an original misidentification. The name did not change, but the application of the name has.

From source of previous post. :)

infraspecific

"Infra" means "below" so when we talk about subspecies, varieties and forms, we are talking about infraspecific ranks.

Principles of the Botanical Code

(Spencer, R., Cross, R. & Lumley, P. 2007. plant names - A guide to botanical nomenclature.  Third edition. Melbourne: Csiro Publishing)

Principle 1: plant nomenclature, animal nomenclature and bacteriological nomenclature are independent.

Principle 2: the names of plants or plant groups are based on TYPES which, with rare exceptions, are actual dried specimens of plants.

Principle 3: nomenclature is based on priority of publication. This principle stresses the overriding importance of the first published name and, together with Principle 4, provides a means of determining which of several published names for the same plant is correct.

Principle 4: each plant or group of plants within a particular system of classification can bear only one correct name: the earliest one following the rules.

Principle 5: scientific names are to be treated as Latin.

Principle 6: rules of the Botanical Code are retrospective.