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PLANT TAXONOMY IN AN AGE 

 OF EXPERIMENT 



Lincoln Constance 



Because taxonomy was, by some centuries, the first aspect of plant science 

 to emerge as botany, there is a regrettable tendency to think of it as old, 

 antiquated, and even obsolete. In the lexicon of our modern world, "new" is 

 ordinarily equated with "good," "old" with "bad," or at least "obsolescent." 

 Emphasis in botany has shifted strongly in the past half century toward the 

 more novel, and particularly the experimental disciplines, with a marked 

 recent emphasis on the biochemical. 



The thesis I should like to develop during the few minutes at my disposal 

 is that, while every branch of natural science must have a preliminary stage 

 of sorting out and appropriately designating the objects with which it has to 

 deal, the role of taxonomy has been by no means completed when this initial 

 organizational impulse exhausts itself. In the plant and animal kingdoms even 

 the pioneer stage of systematics is not within sight of successful completion. 

 It is a moot question whether one group of men will succeed in recording the 

 remaining unclassified organisms before other men succeed in inadvertently 

 destroying them. 



But even if this sorting and naming activity had been completed, the possible 

 uses of a taxonomic system would be only in their infancy. Too often, perhaps, 

 we visualize a taxonomic system as resembling a brick wall, each brick a 

 taxon, and each taxon firmly cemented in its place. Of course, someone peri- 

 odically pulls down and rebuilds the wall, employing some of the original 

 bricks (properly cleaned) and adding new ones where appropriate. Other 

 walls are so poorly fabricated that they may fall of their own weight even 

 when no one touches them, and occasionally they fall on their builder. 



Instead of visualizing a taxonomic system as a wall, we might better con- 

 sider it to be something like a system of library shelves, with the bricks sub- 

 stituted for by pamphlet or file boxes. The pamphlet boxes would have obvious 



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