I do get what he was trying to say in his example. A lion and tiger can mate and produce offspring, a liger or tigon, depending on the genders of the individual parents involved. But the liger or tigon is always sterile because the two species, while similar enough to mate, are unable to produce viable offspring that can reproduce because of genetic incompatibilities. Horses and donkeys can also reproduce and create mules or hinnies, who, also because of genetic incompatibilities, are largely unable to reproduce.
So, his example here of a hybrid plant forming from two distinct species of the same genus is allegedly an example of speciation, since a new species of the same genus has emerged, and it is able to reproduce on its own, furthering its own species' existence.
However, I don't have the research in front of me to know whether they examined the base origins of the two separate species to determine if they were, in fact, two separate species, and not merely two micro-mutations of the same species that reproduced to create a hybrid species that is, in fact, the same base species with a complement of both sets of mutations, much like taking an African American and a Caucasian, whose offspring might be a darker skinned child with blue eyes, like Vanessa Williams, for example. It can be argued that African Americans and Caucasians are distinct species in the sense of the argument being made of these plants. An anthropologist can distinguish between the two ethnicities even by the bones. For that matter, they can tell you if the person was Oriental, African, Caucasian, or even Jewish. So, micro-evolved traits carried over from what would appear to be demonstrably different species of the same genus, while preserving the ability to reproduce and carry the combined traits forward, would only be considered speciation in a loose sense, which I would equate to be the same as the one suggested for the plants. Humans, despite their micro-evolved traits, all originate from the same source species, and I would wager that the plants did too.
