Plants are more like humans than you think

Natural variation with plants can easily be equated to varied beautiful races found in our own species. There is only a single species of human being known as Homo sapiens and members of our species have many facial differences and body shapes, sometimes distinctive to our race or the part of the world in which our family originated. We realize our species has different races which don't look exactly alike but we also understand there is only a single species of humans. The only major difference in most humans is skin color, hair color, height, weight, facial feature such as color of the eyes. All humans still have the same basic internal organs and same basic external body parts.

Even though there are many variations in skin color in our species we would never consider declaring an individual a different "species" simply because of the color of their skin. What about the color of the hair or eyes? if we were to declare each individual with a different skin, hair or eye color a different "species" the confusion would be unfathomable. Which race, hair color or eye color would be the base species? If some extreme "scientist" were to claim the Anglo, Negroid or the Asian race was the accepted species and all others needed a new name for their "species" the world would surely "implode" and rational scientists would immediately declare those new names invalid.

Often we admire racially mixed individuals since they have captured some of the best qualities of each of their parents. The same can easily be true of variations within a single plant species. If one plant variation has developed a unique "skin" color as is common with some human races and another has very unique eye qualities the combination of the two can produce outstandingly attractive offspring. If one parent had unusually long lobes or an unusually shaped leaf blade and that is combined with another parent of the same species that has other unique characteristics, the plant offspring can be stunning and is immediately thought by the untrained to be a "new" species. Still, both parents are from the same genus and species whether plant or human. Still, when we collect plants we often want to do the same thing as that "extreme scientist" simply because a leaf has a reddish underside while a plant that looks basically the same has a greenish underside. Color has very little to do to do with the determination of a species. Simply because the underside of one leaf is burgundy while another is green does not mean the two plants are different species. They just had unique parents.

from Exotic Rainforest