Quote:
Originally Posted by estación seca
A friend of mine is a university botanist. He told me any name, properly published, will always be correct. Only professional botanists would be expected to be up on current hypothesizing.
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Just tongue-in-cheek quibbling on the correct usage and vocabulary here, since you brought it up. Absolutely no criticism of anyone intended...
Any new publication is an hypothesis. If it is well supported and gains some acceptance it is no longer "hypothesizing" and you may have to consider competing theories. Hypothesis and theory are used almost interchangeably in common use, but are quite distinct if talking about science.
And it is true that any validly published name is correct to use, but it can be ambiguous unless it includes author and year of citation, as the same name may have different definitions at different times. Sophronitis cernua (Lindl.) Lindl. 1838 for instance, but that could also include plants later called Sophronitis alagoensis V.P.Castro & Chiron 2003.
Also, Cattleya cernua (Lindl.) Beer 1854 isn't exactly "current" hypothesizing.
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