03-23-2011, 01:37 PM
| || |
I have no clue why, but ludwigea natans and ludwigea repens are the same plant.
The species was initially described in 1771 by Forster as Ludwigia repens
. This plant can occur in several different forms, differing slightly in leaf shape and colour. In 1821, a group of botanists described what they assumed was a different species and called it Ludwigia natans
. Munz in 1965 determined that the variant forms all have intermediate forms, so it is one species with variants. Under the rules of scientific nomenclature the earliest species epithet must prevail [except in very unique circumstances that I won't go into here] and subsequent epithets that may have been assigned as "species" become synonyms. So correctly, this species is Ludwigia repens