December 13, 1985

A dispatch on Nov. 25 from Santa Fe, N.M., about efforts to save native plants from extinction in the United States and Canada, incorrectly described Talavaya Center, a Santa Fe preservation organization. It receives no Federal aid.

The State Health Commissioner recommended yesterday that charges of professional misconduct be reinstated against Dr. Elliot M. Gross, the city's Chief Medical Examiner. The Commissioner, Dr. David Axelrod, asked the State Board of Regents to reverse the ruling by the department's chief administrative law judge that the State Health Department lacked jurisdiction to prosecute the Chief Medical Examiner for gross incompetence or negligence. The judge ruled that performing autopsies was not practicing medicine and that therefore the charges should not be considered by the state-appointed board that ordinarily handled charges of medical misconduct. Yesterday, Dr. Axelrod said that a panel that was to have begun hearings in October should be granted the opportunity to decide the substance of the allegations.

For Thornton F. Bradshaw, who has led RCA for the last five years, the acquisition by the General Electric Company is a personal as well as a professional turning point. Mr. Bradshaw, who is 68 years old, said yesterday that he would retire when the deal is completed next year and become a consultant to the company. When Mr. Bradshaw, who had been president of the Atlantic Richfield Company for 17 years, was appointed by RCA as chairman and chief executive in 1981, he was widely viewed as an interim manager - a distinguished businessman who would lend the company much-needed stability while it searched for a hands-on chief executive. Instead Mr. Bradshaw took charge, selling off some of RCA's new acquisitions, restoring its focus on its original businesses -electronics, communications and entertainment - and returning the company to the black. ''In 1981 the company was worth more dead than alive,'' said James Magid, an analyst at L. F. Rothschild, Unterberg, Towbin. ''Bradshaw has presided over a major corporate turnaround.''

Companies G.E. said it could take a year to complete its merger with RCA. The comment sent RCA shares skidding by $4.25 a share, to $59.25, well below the $66.50 offering price. Trading was extremely heavy as investors, unwilling to tie up their money that long, sold the stock. G.E. said it would take time to arrange $4 billion or more of financing and to get regulatory approvals for the merger. [Page D10.] Grant Tinker, the head of NBC, said the resources of the merged company could speed the network's progress, including the possible development of a 24-hour cable news operation. [D10.] The Big Board is investigating trading in RCA and G.E. stocks before the merger was announced. [D11.] It took just 36 days h for G.E. and RCA to forge their multibillion-dollar merger, beginning with a meeting of the chairmen of G.E. and RCA at the Upper East Side apartment of Felix Rohatyn. [A1.] GAF sweetened the terms of its bid for Union Carbide by offering $68 a share in cash for all outstanding shares and by no longer requiring that Carbide's board approve the deal. [D1.] Oppenheimer & Company officers are discussing buying the investment banking and brokerage house back from Mercantile Holdings of London, according to sources close to both companies. [D1.] Nippon Oil delayed plans to explore some Texaco oilfields because of Texaco's legal battle with Pennzoil. The action symbolized the concern felt by Texaco's lenders, suppliers and partners.

In four years as the chairman of the General Electric Company, John F. Welch Jr. has become known simultaneously as one of the nation's toughest executives, as an intellectually astute manager and as a man more inclined to demand action immediately than wait for a second opinion. Mr. Welch has made his mark on G.E., where sharp cost cutting, plant modernization and a host of management changes have made him something of a guru in business circles. Still, one of the questions that loomed large in the wake of Wednesday's merger announcement by G.E. and the RCA Corporation was whether he has the diplomatic skills to mesh the assets and personalities of two major companies. 'Great Strategic Sense' ''Diplomacy?'' remarked the 50-year-old Mr. Welch today. ''I don't think anybody could recall a more diplomatic merger.'' He added: ''This was not a takeover. This is a merger that makes great strategic sense to both sides.''