Talk:Phryma oblongifolia

Taxonomy

(repeated from the talk pages for Phryma and Phryma leptostachya): It's premature to say that Phryma leptostachya occurs only in North America, and that Asian populations represent P. oblongifolia. First, this is a taxonomic opinion and most references still treat Phryma as consisting of a single species (P. leptostachya), often with two subspecies (P. leptostachya subsp. leptostachya in North America, P. leptostachya subsp. asiatica in Asia). The new treatment is a very recent minority view that has not been fully evaluated. More importantly, the fact that Japanese populations have been segregated as the (resurrected) species P. nana and P. oblongifolia does not mean that P. leptostachya does not occur in Asia. These authors examined Japanese populations almost exclusively; they examined a single specimen from China, and none at all from India, Korea, or Russia. It's unclear whether the names of the Japanese taxa can be applied to any of these continental (i.e., non-Japanese) Asian populations of Phryma. Most critically, they did not address the name P. esquirolii, based on Chinese material, which has long been synonymized under P. leptostachya (or subsp. asiatica) but is older than, and thus has nomenclatural priority over, both P. nana and P. oblongifolia. 71.114.90.151 (talk) 23:46, 2 August 2022 (UTC)