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help: taxon description

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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.