You need to have old scientific names available

As an older horticulturist I don't accept lots of the new changes to botanical classification that has been going on recently. Dave's Garden need to list the old family names as the Mint Family really is Labiatae, the Legume Family is Legumonisae, the Sunflower or Composite Family is Compositae, and many others. You also must list a plant as having older species and generic names and especially how to find them. The stupid botanists, who are mostly "splitters," should actually split the genus Rhododendron into what should be three different genera of the True Rhododendrons, the Deciduous Azaleas, and the Evergreen Azaleas; they are so inconsistent!.

The changes actually have a very good basis for them, they are not just made on a whim - if we always kept to old classifications and never changed, we'd still be saying whales were a kind of fish ;-)

The difficulty is of course that as one ages, it becomes less easy to remember the changes, but it is worth trying to make the effort. And modern genetic analysis is now a very powerful tool for determining relationships, often producing unexpected results.

Rhododendron is actually a good case in point - the genus doesn't sort neatly into those three groups. Take a look at this paper to see some of the complexity involved:
http://www.rhododendron.dk/Goetsch-E-Hall-2005.pdf

Hope this helps!

Resin

The point I am making to Dave's Garden is that if a family or genus name has been changed, the old name still needs to be in the system so that one can find the plant. Many times I have typed in an old name and nothing shows up. For example, I look for Northern Bayberry as Myrica pensylvanica and it does not take me to the new Morella pensylvanica. The whale comment is way out of context. I am skeptical of genetic analysis to some extent. The similarity of genes might not be linked.

As a horticulturist I am very practical. I work with the three types of Rhododendron here in southeast Pennsylvania of the nursery trade. The normal Rhododendrons are evergreen, except the Korean, but it still seems and feels like the others. The normal Deciduous Azaleas as Exbury Hybrids have stout stems, big buds, an uprightness of habit, and are high quality, more expensive plants. The Evergreen Azaleas, mostly from Japanese stock, have tiny leaves, slender stems, tiny buds, grow more bushy, never have yellow or orange flowers, and feel totally different in that they can hurt when handling them with their stiffness and some woody spurs, and they are not such high quality plants as the deciduous types. My dear old teacher Dr. Michael Dirr wrote a huge manual of woody landscape plants for eastern North America in very botanical terms that deals with Rhododendron. If the genus were properly divided into three parts, the manual would not be such a mess of confusion with this genus.

Odd; that should work for you, and does for me - I just did a search for Myrica pensylvanica, and it took me to Morella pensylvanica. Conversely, I know this is a problem in BirdFiles, synonyms don't work there.

Resin

I chose a wrong example. I have looked for plants with the traditional scientific names and not found them. Then I look online and find that there is a new name. Then, I go back and can find it with the new name. It depends, sometimes they have an alternate list of several other scientific and common names and sometimes not. If one of those alternate names matches up, I can find it.

A number of times I look for plants through the family system and I can't find the family. I wish they had the old family names linked to the new ones. I look in my books from the 1990's or even later, they have the old family names. Then I can't find the family in DG. I have to go to general search for the plant and see whether they moved it to a new family or just changed the family name.

Can you give some examples where the search doesn't work?

Resin

I looked to post some maples and I looked for the Maple family of Aceraceae to get there and could not find the family. I used general search for Sugar Maple and found out that the maple and buckeye families were merged into the Sapindaceae.

I had trouble finding Eupatorium purpureum and found out the there was a new generic name for it.

Looking in Clematis, I did not realize that the species name of Sweetautumn Clematis went from C panicultata to C. terniflora, so I used general search with the common name and found it.

Blue Boneset went from Eupatorium coelestinum to Conoclinium. I found the new name online.

I forgot if I had trouble with Black Bugbane of Cimicifuga racemosa going to Actaea. I probably found it thru general search.

The big fern family of Polypodiaceae I found out was split into a few more. When I went for three Osmunda species I found them thru general search and their new family of Osmundaceae. The same happened for a few more fern genera as Dryopteris in their new Dryopteraceae.

There were several herbaceous plants where the species scientific name was changed, so when I went through the family to the list of genera, I could not be sure which one was it. I had to do general search or look somewhere else.

Thanks for checking this out. I don't mean to come across as a complainer. I am just in shock at a number of changes.I should sign up with some payment to Dave's Garden to get to the place where I get more than 10 general searches a day. Dave's Garden is a great site and a good educational opportunity for many. I am trying to post info for the site of plants that are not so well known or could use some more info.

Hi Rick,

An excellent idea! ;-) Alternatively, sites like EOL ( http://eol.org/ ) or even Wikipedia (for all its faults) can give a freely-accessible check on current names.

Resin