Letters to Editor

Abstract

My article on the wild and cultivated rices was originally prepared at the request of the Economic Botanist, Assam, who is contemplating writing a popular book on rice. Owing to the special nature of my assignment, and also due to my limited knowledge of cytogenetics, I had to restrict myself to the morphology of the rice spikelet and preparation of a key to the species and their enumeration and synonymy. This was stated in the beginning of my article. The published summary in Nature essentially deals with this part of my effort, and the omission of cytological discussions and the chromosome numbers of the species of Oryza was intentional. This aspect of the subject is being dealt with by my friend in Assam, from other sources. As such, my article, for obvious reasons, was meant to deal only with a particular portion of the problem and should be judged on its own merits. I agree with Dr. Darlington that the chromosome numbers, wherever available, should be given. This enables us to have a better idea of a species and its affinities with other allied species and genera. But whether the chromosome numbers should be all-important and should form the basis of classification in plants is a subject open to controversy between the cytologists and the taxonomists. As a taxonomist, I believe that a natural system of classification of plants based on synthetic methods over a long period has fairly, and within reasonable limits, stood the test of cytologists.