Day 6: I recently decided to re-read Terry Pratchett's "Hogfather" and discovered that I'd previously gone right over a gem of botanical humour without it registering. I present it here, aptly, to accompany Rusavskia elegans, formerly known as Xanthoria elegans.
Says Ponder Stibbons of bananas, "...Botanically, its a type of fish, sir. According to my theory it's cladistically associaed with the Krullian pipefish, sir, which of course is also yellow and goes around in bunches or shoals."
Ah, yes, the logic of taxonomy! For generations, that was exactly how it worked. This plant has five petals, the ovary is superior, the leaf has such-and-so shape and is semi-succulent, the growth habit is trailing, therefore it has to be a Nasturtium. Okay, it was a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea. Many things (not only vascular plants and lichens, but animals as well) were dumped into genera based on obvious morphological features. With the advent of and growing accessibility to DNA analysis, we're discovering that even some species which look almost identical are in fact members of different genera than we thought. In-depth knowledge of their genetic structure sometimes necessitates the creation of a new genus as was the case with Rusavskia. It looks like a Xanthoria (duck), quacks like a Xanthoria (duck), swims like a Xanthoria (duck), but it is not a Xanthoria. It's still duck-like, but Rusavskia is a goose.
And there was a whole flock of Rusavskia "geese" bright against the dark rock and skies above Panorama Point's historic resroom, more than I have ever seen in one place. I couldn't get close to the main population of rosettes without climbing on the roof (prohibited), but the rock face looked as if someone had come along with a can of orange spray paint and laid on a streak six inches wide by three feet long. In just a few weeks, they'll be buried in snow, remaining hidden for the next six months or so, to survive the cruelty of the prolonged alpine winter.
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