Transferring Leopoldia to Muscari?
Apart the obvious morphological differences, on a gentic basis it seems that the genus Leopoldia is nested inside Muscari so, in iNaturalist we could decide to transfer all Leopoldia species to Muscari. What do you think?
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In Portugal Muscari comosum is more frequently used than Leopoldia comosa.
https://flora-on.pt/#/1Muscari+comosum
https://jb.utad.pt/especie/Muscari_comosum
The same occurs in Flora Iberica. Therefore the suggested change seems to be Ok
from a "pillosphical" point of view I'm more a lumper than a splitter, and I would agree to that.
Due to lack of time I haven't been reading terribly carefully the paper linked by @blue_celery but from what I've seen it seems me pretty uncontroversial that leopoldia should be transferred to Muscari.
@fragmansapir what do you reckon?
I think that such a change should be supported by more research. In my view Leopoldia is different and distinct from Muscari.
Both fits me. I actually agree that erecting Leopoldia probably leaves Muscari paraphyletic ; on the other hand, keeping Muscari l.s. help better understanding its relatiships with Bellevalia, so it's OK for me.
That said, one should keep in mind that classification do not need to always be taxonomic :practical classification would exist too, and even some "species" actually appears to be paraphyletic (Ursus maritimus falls into U. arctos, but we keep it).
The solution, in the future, as Leopoldia appears to be well characterized, and monophyletic, would be to split the rest of Muscari, to create monophyletic genus; waiting for this, what we do here is identification, not classification. Be it called either Leopoldia, Muscari, or even Bellevalia, there's no problem of recognition of one species / taxon, just a problem of how about naming them. Whatever we do, no one taxon will be lost, so I agree to do what is the most commonly accepted and used, even in imho Leopoldia should be regarded as valid.
@fragmansapir heheh, yes I do remember you argued that when we met :-)
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