Replies in-line:
On 16/09/2015 06:33, johnw wrote:
On Sep 15, 2015, at 6:44 PM, Jerry Clough - OSM <sk53_...@yahoo.co.uk
<mailto:sk53_...@yahoo.co.uk>> wrote:
Hi John,
No there is nothing I'm aware of which discriminates anywhere between
cultivated pears in general (/Pyrus communis/) & specific cultivars
('Conference' <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conference_pear>).
Cultivar just is shorthand for "cultivated variety" so of course
there is no hierarchy variety=>cultivar.
I guess I was looking for an idea of where people draw the lines
between the trees, like we can with potatoes and sweet potatoes. I
know there are many many kinds of both, but usually they can easily be
divided into two groups, because we can say that a potato and a sweet
potato are commonly referred to by those two separate names, and
usually not confused with each other by the people that grow them and
consume them.
Sweet Potatoes & Potatoes are completely different things: different
plant families (Convolvulacae vs Solanaceae), different origin as a
cultivated plant (Central America vs Andes), different method of
cultivation, they have in common that they are root vegetables. When I'm
buying potatoes in the supermarket I pay a great deal of attention to
the variety: King Edwards have very different properties from Desiree or
Maris Piper. The 'Lumper' variety is historically important because of
the Irish Potato famine, as it was this variety's susceptibility to
/Phythophora /which was the proximate cause of the famine. (See for
example Salaman's /The History/ /& Social Influence of the Potato/
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redcliffe_N._Salaman#The_history_and_social_influence_of_the_potato>
, and late works on the same subject).
I am very comfortable throwing all grapes into “grapevines” or all
oranges into “orange_trees” - but I don’t know about some obviously
different fruits that share the same words - Asian pears look
different, taste different - and most importantly - not considered a
“pear” by the people that grow them - “pears” are “western pears” to
them. So I feel comfortable saying that having “pear_trees” and
“sand_pear_trees” is a good idea.
Hmm, not all grapes are the same. In NY state and elsewhere in the NE of
the US, grapes are grown which are native to North America
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vitis_labrusca>. The vast majority of
grapes grown for fruit and wine-making are however /Vitis vinifera/.
Similarly your pears are different species not varieties.
But when it comes to all the other trees I have never heard of until I
was cleaning up that list (is a "Governor’s plum" a plum? Is a
“Custard Apple” an Apple?), I was looking to see if there is some
known way of putting the trees into usable categories or types for
mapping without having people suggest them one by one - otherwise
we’ll get odd regional or slang names - or things possibly grouped by
distant mappers who don’t understand the nuances - like me with some
of these trees.
Javbw
For these types of differences I think it is important to be aware that
things are different, and not try and subsume them in some artificial
category. We're still living with early American colonists calling
things Robins, Blackbirds and Sparrows, when they weren't. In general
wikipedia is your friend here!
The whole point of taxon/species tags is to allow much more precise
tagging than is possible, say with the trees tag. Even in the UK an oak
wood may be made up of one of 2 species, and we have a very impoverished
set of trees. There are not mutually exclusive, although one idea of
taxon was to allow any taxonomic level to be used. Thus I'm fine with
trees=pear_trees and taxon=Pyrus pyrifolia for Asian Pear (I would
always recommend using taxon:en or taxon:ja to add a vernacular name as
well) and trees=pear_trees and taxon=Pyrus communis for the Common Pear.
Jerry
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