On 14 March 2012 20:17, Roderic Page <r.page@bio.gla.ac.uk> wrote:

Apart from the fact that I can barely bring myself to care about plants ;) I suspect that the vast majority of names do not present these problems. Why do we let edge cases determine what we do?

The first argument is valid, the second not. A high fraction of plant names have infraspecific taxa, and by necessity any such name has one autonym plus one or several separate infraspecific names.

Yes, usage of infraspecific names is considerably lower than usage of specific names, but it is not an edge case. Even hybrids are not an edge case - I really whish I could forget about them, but they always crop up and annoy me...

Gregor