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help
The taxon description may contain wildly different amounts of text, depending on the taxon.
When a taxon contains lower level taxons, the most commonly useful description is a key to its child taxons. The key is usually in the form of a bulleted list of features for each each child taxon that help distinguish it from its sibling taxons. A taxon key is common for plant genuses (where the species often look much alike), but it is also occasionally used for a species (that has subspecies or varieties) or for higher-level taxons. If, however, the child taxons are easily distinguished visually, the parent taxon may simply have a list of its children without further information.
In many cases, the description for the lowest-level taxon is simply a repeat of its key info from its parent taxon. If the parent taxon has no key info, the child’s description may be blank.
Where the taxon description refers to how common/rare a taxon is, that is specifically within the bay area. It may also list its presence (or rarity) in certain locations; this implies that it has not been observed anywhere else.