Subject: Re: Moss and lichen

From: "Evgueni Sklyanin" <[email-masked]>
Date: Tue, 30 Oct 2001 15:40:08 -0000

--- In lojban@y..., Pierre Abbat <phma@o...> wrote:
> On Monday 29 October 2001 21:25, Craig wrote:
>
> But if it is moss, what do we call lichen? And if it is lichen, what 
do we 
> call moss? Besides, lichens are classified taxonomically; they are 
mostly 
> ascomycetes, IIRR. They are classified by the fungus component.
> 
> phma

A while ago I have already asked this question when working on a
Russian translation of the gismu list.
The reply of lojbab (see it at
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/lojban/message/1261 )
was the following:

>The denotation is closer to that of mosses, and the concept was 
>the mass of non-flowering greenery plants; you might also include
>ferns in this definition, but I think we were less sure that would 
>hold. At least in older classifications (not sure of the current 
>biology), while a lichen was a symbiote, it was a symbiote that was 
>considered to be in the plant kingdom rather than the animal kingdom.
>
>Now we have 7 or 8 kingdoms worth of biological taxonomy, and I don't
>know that lichens are still considered plants. I know that algae 
>are sometimes plants and sometimes in a separate kingdom, and that
>bacteria have a couple kingdoms all to themselves and are no longer
>considered animals. But Lojban gismu making was based on Loglan 
>gismu making which dates back to 1950, when biological taxonomy 
>seemed as fixed as the stars (which of course aren't fixed, so we 
>should have known better zo'o).

mi'e .evgenis.