Code of Ethics
Plant taxonomy operates within an internationally recognized system of nomenclatural rules, without the standardized evidentiary procedures used in other disciplines.
It also does not have an international code of professional ethics. However, the absence of such a code does not eliminate the responsibility to apply ethical and evidentiary standards.
One purpose of the research presented in Compendium Pleurothallidinarum is to examine living plants that have entered cultivation under existing names, compare their morphology and biomechanics with published descriptions, type material, field observations, and related species, and determine whether those identifications are supported by the totality of the evidence.
Living collections provide opportunities to study floral development, biomechanics, phenology, pollination-related structures, species variation, and cultivation requirements.
Therefore, controlled-environment cultivation is integrated into the research process, allowing plants to be observed throughout their life cycles and across multiple flowering events.
All cultivated plants examined in this research were legally acquired.
No plants were collected from the wild for the purpose of this research.
The presence of undescribed or misidentified species within the international orchid trade should not, by itself, be attributed to the trade.
The discovery of an undescribed species in cultivation is therefore not evidence of illegal collection or unsustainable extraction from wild populations.
The circulation of a plant under an incorrect name establishes only that its identity was not correctly resolved before or during its distribution through horticulture.
It does not establish where, when, or under what circumstances the original material entered cultivation.
Commercial growers, vendors, and collectors rely upon the taxonomic identifications available to them. Attributing the presence of undescribed species in horticulture to illegal or unsustainable collection without evidence improperly shifts responsibility to the orchid trade and those who legally acquire, propagate, and maintain these plants.
Ultimately, researchers bear responsibility for the taxonomic identifications that enter and persist within horticulture through the use of overly broad species concepts, unresolved species complexes, and the treatment of discrete morphological differences as intraspecific variation.
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