Sigyn and I have accompanied the human female to the herbarium again. She has finished her labors with the difficult genus Solidago (goldenrods) and has turned her attention to Symphyotrichum, another large and difficult genus.

For the 99.9999% of the world that does not speak (or care about) botanese, these are the plants known as Asters. Formerly, these plants were in the genus Aster, but someone decided that was too easy to spell and to pronounce and that it would be much, much better to come up with a name that was less accessible to the unwashed masses. (Whether professional botanists are more washed is up for debate. They do spend a lot of time playing in the dirt.)

Many of the Asters in this part of Midgard are perennials with narrow leaves and white flower heads. Sorting them out can be tricky. I suspect that most botanists don’t even try to tell them apart. Instead, they view each herbarium sheet and each newly described species with a carefully-practiced Thoughtful Look and a non-committal, “Ah, yes. Quite so.” No one wants to admit that they really have no clue. This is how names such as “Symphyotrichum oolentangiense*” arise and go unchallenged.

Today the human female is checking all of the specimens of Heath Aster, Symphyotrichum ericoides (literally, “the Symphyotrichum that looks like a heather”, since Erica is the slanty name for some types of heather) to see if they are correctly identified.

This one is actually fairly distinct among the white-flowered asters, since it has a multitude of closely-spaced small heads, tiny upper leaves, and “phyllaries that are tipped with a small white or clear spine.**” Whatever that means.

She has five folders of these to go through, paying close attention to make sure that no specimens of S. falcatum, which has slightly larger leaves and flower heads, have crept in. Just to keep her humble, I’m going to do a little magical mischief and make sure that a good few have characters that are midway between the two.

Eehehehehe! She found another one of my little jokes.

Not only is this NOT S. ericoides, it’s not even a Symphyotrichum! It wasn’t collected in the area that the Big Book of Boring Botany (BBBB) is meant to cover, so she could just forget about it, but because she is who she is, it is going to eat at her and eat at her until she figures out what it actually is.

See how easy it is to derail a work session in the herbarium? The specimen is from far west Texas, an area she’s more than passing familiar with, but the specimen is so old and brittle that a thorough dissection isn’t really possible. It’s not even certain what the original flower color was. It’s yellow now, but what was it originally? And how did it end up in the S. ericoides folder?

Ah. That’s how. The label says Leucelene ericoides and someone at some point just assumed that was the same as Aster ericoides, now Symphyotrichum ericoides. But again what should it be?

Oh, now, human female this is cheating! She has summoned up a website that has data and images for thousands and thousands of herbarium specimens. Since this one was collected by a fairly famous botanist, there’s a good chance that there is a duplicate specimen out there that might be correctly identified. Hmm. Looks like there are several that were databased as, you guessed it, Leucelene ericoides, but that is no help. Oh! No, wait! Here’s an image of one that was annotated to Chaetopappa ericoides. She says that makes more sense, since Chaetopappa is a valid genus and C. ericoides a valid species.

Checking the local herbarium database, it looks like there are some in the collection.

This folder has all species of Chaetopappa except C. asteroides, C. bellidifolia, and C. effusa, so they should be in here.

Great Frigga’s Hairpins!

This is one that the human female collected! Shame on you, woman, for not recognizing it at once!

And look over here! Just to make your day a little more complicated, here’s another whole folder, one that is just C. ericoides.

Now you’ll have to assemble them all into this solely-ericoides folder and add “ericoides” to the list of species not in the “everything but” folder. And because you’re you, you’re going to have to look through all of them and make sure the identifications and names are up to date!

Ha! Look at this one. What a runt.

Hmm. Looks like the great botany god Lloyd Shinners used the name Leucelene ericoides for this specimen as well. It’s not like him to have made an error. Perhaps Leucelene is merely an older name for Chaetopappa?

And what about the ones like this that were labeled Aster leucelene? And where does Aster pilosus from the Shinners-annotated sheet figure in? Was that a misidentification, or is it a another synonym? I do love to watch her pointy little head spin around! Time to consult the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s PLANTS Database of plant names, classifications, and distributions.

Hmm. That can’t be right. It’s an open public resource! Better try again.

Ehehehe! Human female, what did you do to get yourself banned?! Try it again. Perhaps the third time is the charm.

And there is the shiny cherry on the sweet mischief sundae! Not only can you not look it up, you can’t ask anyone else to do it for you!

What? You’ve run out of time today, with two folders of Symphyotrichum ericoides left to check? Tsk, tsk. Looks like you’ll have to pack everything up and come back another day, won’t you? By then I will have a completely new rabbit hole for you to stumble into.

>|: [

*There’s actually nothing wrong with the epithet “oolentangiense”, which refers to the Olentangy/Oolentangy River in Ohio. It just looks silly.

**And because I’m a right b@st@rd, you can be sure that not all the phyllaries will be spine-tipped. Maybe just one on each head. Or every other head…