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physiology of a certain phenomenon going on for one species, and there are 100
species in this genus so something like that we don't have any information in
regard to the other 99 so it is not comparable information. But we keep that in
the back of our minds and we can perhaps whether justifiably or unjustifiably
infer that maybe the others are the same. (Student) I think to go out on a
limb and say that seeds tell me that plant distribution is valid as a key to
the identification plant. (Henry) It is, but we are not talking about identi-
fication, we are talking about classification now. And it is real handy to know
that a certain group of plants only exist in Australia. It limits our searching.
We can use that definitely in a key for identification. (Student) But doesn't
this fact that they are located only in one place imply that they differ from
other plants in some marked way? (Henry) It does imply that. Well, we infer
that as true. On some occasions we can take two quite different plants and bring
them down to the low lands and may in the Arctic conditions and let
us say that we can grow them under arctic or alpine conditions. Both of those
plants may become cushion or dwarf plants, quite different than they are in the
low lands, but both of them will react the same way, and I am sure that Craig
here can give you a number of examples of that sort of situation on the
They are reacting to their environment. And if you are doing an ecological
classification, then such characters are of importance to you.

Host determination variation, that is primarily one that mycologists get
into in particular. And again that is a very good identification procedure,
but it is not necessarily valid, unless you can have other information if
it is a segregating information, then you may be able to use it. But in general,
host variation is not important. It is nice that we find that a certain genus of
fungi is always on a particular type of plant. It is real helpful for identifica-
tion purposes, but it is not how we cluster them. It is not how we determine
whether they are a nameable species unit. We also have another type of variation
which I have down here as density. Sometimes plants that grow in great masses