Toward a Rational Classification of Cultivated Plants

Summary The methods of formal taxonomy have not been very satisfactory for the classification of cultivated plants. As a result, the people who deal with cultivated plants the most have developed their own informal and intuitive classifications based on experience as to what constitutes useful groupings. An attempt is made to provide a framework in which both systems can operate with a minimum of confusion. The structure of the total available gene pool is characterized by assigning taxa to primary, secondary and tertiary gene pools. At the infraspecific level, cultivars are grouped into races and subraces in an informal way without rigid rules for the use of terms.