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Page 6

APPROACH
The first step in an approach to any problem should be to define the
problem, determine what is of particular interest about the problem, and to
check ones premises in regard to the discipline or disciplines involved.
The problem herein referred to was a group of plants collected by my professor in Taximetrics, purported to be representatives of the Family leguminosae,
Genus Astragalus. So it seemed they were. My objective was to be a classification of a number of these plants by the taximetical method I was to
learn in class.
Basically, the plants interested me because the genus contains species that are poisonous range forage plants quite unhealthy for cattle, and are
widely distributed problem for ranchers in Colorado. This is primarily because the genus contains over 300 species with much intergradation, which
makes it very difficult to tell the poisonous species from the not so, or non-
poisonous ones. My first steps were to consult respected authorities on the
genus such as "The Atlas of American Astragalus" by Barneby and "The Manual of Colorado Plants" by Harrington (containing a key and descriptions by Porter).
These works gave me some insight into what characters are important (i.e., help to classify) for the genus. There were of course many such characters, but I
selected only 20 (those I felt would be easiest to collect) to keep the study within the scope of the class. Also from my readings in Barneby I discovered
that historically the genus had been classified in two ways: one based primarily on gross morphology and a second based primarily on floral morphology.
It struck me that it might be interesting to contrast these two ways of classifying the genus to determine if there would be a difference in the results. I
hypothesized that given the assumptions of "biological order," a common genetic make-up, and reasonable care in selection and measurement of characters, the