A survey of primary homology assessment: different botanists perceive and define characters in different ways

Cladistic analyses begin with an assessment of variation for a group of organisms and the subsequent representation of that variation as a data matrix. The step of converting observed organismal variation into a data matrix has been considered subjective, contentious, under-investigated, imprecise, unquantifiable, intuitive, as a black-box, and at the same time as ultimately the most influential phase of any cladistic analysis (Pimentel and Riggins, 1987; Bryant, 1989; Pogue and Mickevich, 1990; de Pinna, 1991; Stevens, 1991; Bateman et al., 1992; Smith, 1994; Pleijel, 1995; Wilkinson, 1995; Patterson and Johnson, 1997). Despite the concerns of these authors, primary homology assessment is often perceived as reproducible. In a recent paper, Hawkins et al. (1997) reiterated two points made by a number of these authors: that different interpretations of characters and coding are possible and that different workers will perceive and define characters in different ways. One reviewer challenged us: did we really think that two people working on the same group would come up with different data sets? The conflicting views regarding the reproducibility of the cladistic character matrix provoke a number of questions. Do the majority of workers consistently follow the same guidelines? Has the theoretical framework informing primary homology assessment been adequately explored? The objective of this study is to classify approaches to primary homology assessment, and to quantify the extent to which different approaches are found in the literature by examining variation in the way characters are defined and coded in a data matrix.

The illustrated dictionary of gardening : a practical and scientific encyclopaedia of horticulture for gardeners and botanists /

"Reference to illustrations of plants other than those figured in this work" precedes text in each volume.

Some American medical botanists commemorated in our botanical nomenclature. Delivered as a lecture before the Medical Historical Society of Chicago, 1910, and before the University of Nebraska, October 16, 1913.

Bibliographical footnotes.

A popular dictionary of botanical names and terms, with their English equivalents, for the use of botanists and horticulturists, as well as for lovers of the flowers of garden, field and wood,

Mode of access: Internet.

Catalogue of portraits of botanists exhibited in the museums of the Royal Botanic Gardens,

Arranged alphabetically with biographical sketch and description of portrait.

The flora of Switzerland for the use of tourists and field-botanists. /

Mode of access: Internet.

South Carolina botanists: biography and bibliography,

Mode of access: Internet.

The illustrated dictionary of gardening : a practical and scientific encyclopaedia of horticulture for gardeners and botanists /

Includes errata.

International botanical congress, Cambridge (England), 1930. Nomenclature; proposals by British botanists.

"Proposals by the Sub-committee on nomenclature, appointed by the Imperial botanical conference, London, 1924": p. 3-45; separate proposals by T.A. Sprague and five others: p. 46-203.

South Carolina botanists: biography and bibliography

The monograph is a systematic arrangement of the biographies and bibliographies of botanists in South Carolina who have contributed to the state’s reputation in botany.

Five minutes at Nowanup

Five Minutes featured in the author's exhibition Lightsite, which toured Western Australian galleries from February 2006 to November 2007. It is a five-minute-long exposure photographic image captured inside a purpose-built, room-sized pinhole camera which is demountable and does not have a floor. Five Minutes depicts an inverted image of the outside environment where two botanists stand. The light from this exterior passes though the pinhole camera's aperture and illuminates the internal scene which includes the ground of the site which lies inside the room along with another two botanists standing inside. The image evokes the connectively the botanists have with this landscape, a site which they are presently revegetating with endemic and indigenous plant species. By illuminating the botanists only with light projected from the landscape itself (through the agency of the pinhole camera's aperture) the inhabitant and their landscape are depicted as inseparable subjects.