🚀 go-pugleaf

 "Graham Harden" <G.Harden@bigfoot.com> of the U. of Queensland writes:

>It appears that people had asked most of my questions previously.  I thank
>all of you for your interesting responses.  It appears I will have to read
>Gupta's book myself before making many further comments.  Particularly
>interesting is the range of other species that others have quoted her as
>having found in pre-columbian era sculpture.

[snip]
>By the way, does anyone know if Gupta had the full collaboration of a local
>systematic botanist (ie taxonomist)?  If there is one attached to her it
>would lend much credence to her claims of elimination of local analogies.
>Please don't flame me, I only want to know, as I haven't been able to locate
>a copy of her text yet.

Gupta is described as an "Ethnobotanist" and "Indologist", and has written
a book on the use of plants in Indian mythology.  I don't know what her
botanical credentials are.  Surely botanists should go over here
controversial (New World) identifications one by one to see if she 
hasn't overlooked an Old World look-alike.  Johannessen and Parker
concur with her maize identification, and Johannessen solo with her
sunflower identification.  However, they are geographers studying 
agricultural use of plants, not botanists per se.

-- Hu McCulloch
   http://economics.sbs.ohio-state.edu/jhm/arch/outliers.html