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One Lump Or Two: How Many Wild Gingers Inhabit North America?, W. John Hayden
One Lump Or Two: How Many Wild Gingers Inhabit North America?, W. John Hayden
Biology Faculty Publications
Depending on which source one consults, the answer is either one (Asarum), or two (Asarum + Hexastylis). It is a classic lump-or-split situation. To mention just a few sources, Fernald (1950) and Gleason & Cronquist (1991) lump all the wild gingers into a single genus, whereas Radford et al. (1968), the Digital Atlas of the Virginia Flora (Virginia Botanical Associates 2010), and the Flora of North America (Whitmore & Gaddy 1997; Whitmore et al. 1997) split Asarum and Hexastylis apart. Deference to authority is a poor way to assess any scientific question, and for these wild …