What are criteria can be used to determine whether a plant group is a good TAXON?
A good taxon has predictive value. This means that, if you know to which taxon a plant belongs, you should be able to predict many of its characteristics, including characteristics that were not considered when the taxon was originally described. Most of the taxa that we work with today were formed by looking at morphological characteristics. In other words, by considering how the plants looked. Plants that looked more like each other than other plants were placed in the same taxon. We still usually take this as a starting point, largely because we are visually oriented organisms. We can quickly assess, and describe, things that we can see. Dogs might place greater emphasis on smell. This approach sometimes lead to arguments about whether it is more important to be alike in leaf shape or number of stamens. That is when a brand new character, for instance, the ability to produce a particular kind of chemical, may be considered particularly important. If the chemical is common in individ
