Why does the following markdown string:
**Gomphocarpus (*Gomphocarpus physocarpus*, syn. *Asclepias physocarpa*)**
produces:
Gomphocarpus (Gomphocarpus physocarpus, syn. Asclepias physocarpa)**
i.e.<p><em><em>Gomphocarpus (</em>Gomphocarpus physocarpus</em>, syn. <em>Asclepias physocarpa</em>)**</p>
I experience this in the Try page of this site and on my own web site where I installed the prebuilt JS parser. Strangely, it is well formatted in the Preview pane at the right of the box where I typed this message… (same on stackoverflow, so I guess that a different parser is used here for the preview of WMD).