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San José, April 1, 1981.

Dear Bill:

Your card of 27 March crossed my thick letter on its way over the mountains,
but since I hope to get to other matters that have been waiting too long, I am
writing at once to answer the few questions you raised. I have looked closer into
a recent paper by Yurtsev in which he seems to have reverted the advice he gave
us in 1975 on Tephrosieris from NE Asia, though it is too long to relate here. But
he seems to support your view that T. jacutica is a species in its own right,
distinct from the Kjellmanii taxon, on which we agree, though the former still
may be a subspecies only, as he mentioned earlier. That is a question requiring
hybridization. So, use T. Kjellmanii with confidence, but do not refer to us as
its final authors, because Holub made the transfer between the time when we
completed the manuscript of the Atlas and got our Botaniska Notiser paper printed...
you will see that there is a discrepancy between these publications because we
dropped our duplicate transfers in the latter when we got Holub's paper.

As to Packera, you have probably seen the list I made of it in my last letter.
There is no doubt about its distinction, and many more species than those in
Colorado need to be transferred, as you certainly observed. However, it is against
my ethics to transfer the Colorado taxa by myself for the simple reason that you
initiated the study of these plants. So why not make them, and several other
new transfers or names needed for that flora, jointly in a short paper that
perhaps could be printed in Phytologia or somewhere else where it can get out fast?
Perhaps where you print your other remarks on the flora?

I have looked for informations on the chromosome numbers of Ligularia that you
are more familiar with than I am myself. Of course, there are numerous inexact
reports by botanists with technical cytological knowledge without being exact or
critical, and many seem to have adjusted their numbers to the common x : 10 or 5
of classical Senecio. However, as far as I dare to judge my colleagues, it seems
to me that both groups (or are they identical?) have the basic number x : 29
and so are secondary evolved from plants with 60 diploid chromosomes. If that is
correct...and I have reason to believe it is...then there is a distinct genetical
gap between these genera and Senecio proper. I am sure the same is true for some
of the other socalled Senecio groups and would not hesitate to distinguish them
even if I only had their morphology to go on...and I would simply ignore all "advice"
from "everybody including Nordenstam" and do what I feel is correct. Although
Nordenstam studied at Lund and got some cytological technique as everybody of
his generation got through Lövkvist, he and the others did never get the genetical
philosophy that I was brought up on a generation earlier, and so he, and they,
perhaps except Arne Strid, continue to think taxonomy on the basis of the good
old 18th century philosophy that even tried to subdue the great Hultén. And that
generation did not have the privilege of advice from Hultén as we did, for the
simple reason that then he had moved to Stockholm and Lund, as Uppsala, could
continue to teach students as if he had never been and as if there had been no
addition to taxonomical knowledge and philosophy for a century or more. I wonder if
your short stay in Stockholm at Riksmuseet made it possible for Hultén also to
contaminate you...with the result that our ideas coincide in general?

With the very best regards from us all to you all,

as ever,