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Yes that is the passage that I meant when I referred to "Holland's rules".
As I understand it (and as I said I may have missed something) essentially the young man took a list of all the trees from Holland and made an aluminium name plate for each one. Now I see that as being no different at all from if he had just taken the list and copied it onto another piece of paper and said "There! I have named all your trees", and should he been aware of the prize then wanted to claim it. For myself I do not see copying Holland's list of trees constitutes "naming" them (that even if he helped compile it by getting it in tidy order, for example).
But, importantly, I am not trying to downgrade the merits of the book as I thought it of considerable merit, and an enjoyable and worthwhile read; I would not discourage others from reading it. It was just a point that struck me from my own personal perspective as being a bit weak and I suspect we all find such things in even the best written of books, and quite commonly in their endings.
Thanks for nominating it as I likely would never have been aware of it and so would not have read it.
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