Taxonomy. Straight questions to a complex issue.

[Andrew]

You hit on a good point but I think the horticulturalists and the bodies that represent them and not the botanists need to be more responsible in the way they use taxonomy. Taxonomic opinions will continue to change as they do in any science, however, there is no need for horticulture to keep up with the Jones's (if you can pardon the pun). While the current botanic trend may be to split or lump a species, horticulturalists need to realise the damage this does to the integrity of past breeding. The RHS currently accepts Dendrobium curvicaule in hybrid registration despite Kew still accepting it as a variety of speciosum. This is completely irresponsible on the part of the RHS and the presumably Australian horticulturalists/hybridisers who advocated being able to register using curvicaule, as it draws into question the parentage of a lot of speciosum breeding in the same way that registering Black Pam hybrids under teretifolium has left us with a bunch of dubious Dockrillia breeding.

[tropterrarium]

Andrew: you hit on a collision of incompatible worlds. Taxonomy as applying rules of ICBN mostly concerns natural species, occasionally natural hybrids. Taxonomy is a fluid discipline, and there is no enforcing body on who is right and who is wrong. The court of public scientific opinion is the ultimate arbiter.

Horticulturists and the registration of hybrids is of no interest to ICBN. Could not care less.

There have been attempts to have immutable referents to taxa, with so-called Life Science Identifier (LSID) numbers. Still not perfect, particularly when ranks of taxa are changed, or if a taxon gets split up. As a working (zoological) taxonomist, I consider LSIDs fashionable nonsense.

So rather than getting worked up about different system, go with the flow. Accept that there will be changes, and the the system is not iron-clad.