Thanks Guy. I'm not a taxonomist but I have a lot of field identification experience and I was surprised to hear that P. longifolia was to be made a variety of P. sericea (as now accepted by the Sydney RBG Herbarium) as to me the two former species are quite different in their field presentation. Often side by side in Blue Mountains bushland one is not mistaken for the other. In a simplistic sense I thought that two different sub-species existed in different geographical locations (and were somewhat different to each other) while a variety is localised within the larger species distribution. In that sense I guess this makes the use of the term 'variety' appropriate. The only trouble with this in my mind is that the former P. longifolia is not a localised variant and is quite widespread invariably growing with P. sericea var. sericea. Perhaps this is just the Blue Mountains experience. Overall I would be happier if the status of the two plants was maintained as species.