Plant Story--Blue Mustard, Chorispora tenella

Spring is the blooming time of many plants of the mustard family, Brassicaceae, from shepherd's purse to black mustard to clasping pepperweed, but also radishes, cabbages, and oilseed rape. The family is pretty easily recognized because the flowers have four petals in the shape of a cross, the source of the older (still valid) family name Cruciferae.

blue mustard, Chorispora tenella

Blue mustard, Chorispora tenella, is one of the spring mustards. Actually, its seeds germinate in the fall, the young plants lay low over the winter and put on a spurt of growth in spring to flower in April or May, dying in the heat of midsummer. That life cycle is described as being a winter annual, and like many winter annuals, if conditions are right, blue mustard seeds will germinate in spring and grow rapidly, making them also "spring annuals."

Botany Rules 4: Who Makes the Rules?

Nasturtium officinale
NOT Nasturtium nasturtium-aquaticum

     Why is it Nasturtium officinale not Nasturtium nasturtium-aquaticum as some other botanist proposed?

    Who makes the rules for plant names?

   The answer is: The International Association of Plant Taxonomists (IAPT) (home page).

Tropaeolum, determined to be
sufficiently different from
other plants that it is the
only genus in family Tropaeolaceae

   The rules for naming plants and for how they are organized into groups are agreed upon by vote of the International Association of Plant Taxonomists. They meet at International Botanical Congresses, about every 6 years. Suggestions and amendments come out of committees, are voted on by mail and then ratified by the membership attending the International Congress. In this way, the rules of plant naming evolve. Current rules: http://www.iapt-taxon.org/nomen/main.php  

     Like all of science, it is a human activity. Like all human activities, therefore, it is subject to quirky human behavior.