AusBonsai

Why some Japanese White Pine are call Pinus Parviflora and some are call Pinus Pentaphylla. Are they the same thing? or are they different.

If different please explain more.

John

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_White_Pine

ok same thing. y 2 names?

same reason other species have two names but are the same. look at the old fukien tea, how many has that got!

ehritia, carmona, etc

So where can we purchase them?

dont know how well they will go in sydney mate, might be to humid..

Pinus pentaphylla was the previous name for P. parviflora. It has happened a few times with known bonsai species, Pinus leptolepsis became Larix leptolepsis, then Larix kaempferi. Ulmus chinensis became Ulmus parvifolia. It happens all the time as more becomes known about a plant species, they occasionally get reclassified.

Cheers,
Mojo

Ah the mystical world of botanical nomenclature.

Some reasons for abnormalities and changes include:
*2 separately named plants becoming the same thing
*A new form is discovered and split off, thus a separate species or subspecies may be born
*There may not be sufficient reason to classify it as a new species, so an older existing species name may be used
*New literature might become available indicating the species was in fact discovered earlier or somebody else may have had a special use for it, so it is named after them instead
*Original naming might be inaccurate morphologically if the species name is description
*New DNA work might indicate familiarity with a different plant, or that it has evolved separately from the genus it is currently in
*There are "lumpers" and "splitters" amongst the experts involved and they are willing to change whatever they can to get their way

There are plenty more reasons too. In this case, the correct way to look at it would be to say: "The Japanese White Pine is called Pinus parviflora and is synonymous with P. pentaphylla".

However, the outdated pentaphylla simply means fives leaves, reffering to the 5 needle like leaves from each cluster. The description is not incorrect, it is just an outdated name for this plant. Why is it not called Pinus albus, Pinus japonicus, Pinus glaucus or something else is something only those that are involved in this sort of work know.

*EDIT* Please note that the species names (the second word in the binomial naming system) does NOT have a capital letter as per your original post. e.g. Pinus Parvifolia is incorrect. Pinus parvifolia is correct.

Joel

If you browse through the old Kokofu books they are all referred to as Pentaphylla well into the 60's, then in issue 65 Pinus Pentaphylla was referred to as Pinus Pentaphylla var Himekomatsu. I have a large gap in my books going from issue 65 straight to 73. Somewhere in there they changed it to parviflora as that is what they referring to as white pine. I presume var Himekomatsu became parviflora. Just some trivia i stumbled upon.