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This page is just a miscellany of bits that don't fit in anywhere else but might be useful to someone.
Burncoose & South Down Nurseries, Gwennap, Redruth, Cornwall, TR16 6BJ (phone 01209 861112) - Suppliers of unusual plants.
Jungle Giants, Burford House Gardens, Tenbury Wells, Worcestershire, WR15 8HQ. (phone 01584 819885, fax 01584 819779, email bamboo@junglegiants.co.uk) - Specialise in bamboos. When they inadvertantly supplied me with the wrong species they went to great lengths to replace it and to compensate me for a season's lost growing time - the personal service (and the plant quality) could not be better.
Paradise Centre, Twinstead Road, Lamarsh, Bures, Suffolk, CO8 5EX (phone 01787 269449) - Growers of unusual bulbs/tuberous plants
Broadleigh Gardens, Bishops Hull, Taunton, Somerset, TA4 1AE. (phone 01823 286231) - Specialists in small bulbs.
I'm sure there are others just as good, but I can confirm receiving excellent service from these.
In theory this difficulty is solved by the use of scientific, Latin-based names using the system devised by Linnaeus. The way this system has been developed in recent years unfortunately means it is failing to achieve this objective.
The problem seems to be that it is being used for two quite different and incompatible purposes. The application of the system in actually deciding what name shall be given to a species has been hijacked by taxonomists whose only purpose is to use it to define the relationships between species by allocating them to genera reflected in the name, attempting to keep this up to date with the latest scientific thinking, and in cases of dispute over the correct name for a genus relying purely on "who thought of it first" - the oldest name wins, regardless of how widely a particular name is used.
The serious fault in this, in my opinion, is that the objective of ease of communication of identity of a species is being totally ignored. For this purpose the prime requirement is stability. Once a name has been established in general use for a species, it should be retained permanently, regardless of changing views on which species are really related and so belong in the same genus. There is a need, therefore, for two different international systems, one for use by taxonomists, which can be safely ignored by everyone else, and one for use by the rest of the world for purposes of simply identifying which species we are talking about in an unambiguous manner. There is no harm in them both being based on the same system and having names in common, providing everyone involved with buying, selling and growing plants, and in advising about them, uses the stable system, and the taxonomists keep their unstable system to themselves. Like legal homosexuality under current British law, the taxonomists' system should be confined to "consenting adults in private"!
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