Methodology: Scientific names

Introduction

Scientific names of plants have greatly evolved, and continue to do so with the advances of knowledge (genetic, cladistic...). Compilation of names originating from different and old sources (more than ten or twenty years!) can only give confuse and incoherent results.

The redirection procedure, usual in Mediawiki, allows to create a species page with a name, and redirect it later towards the name retained now. But we wish to avoid this practice, in order not to increase the size of this site. Synonyms will always be searched for in the Search tab. As a general practice, only the most commonly used synonyms and those that may cause confusion will be mentioned. Links to the relevant nomenclatural databases are given. Pl@ntUse has no vocation to duplicate what is well done there, as this kind of task is quite technical, and needs to be updated frequently.

First, if you wish to compile a list, please tell us before. Maybe this has already been done, and your taxa may already (or will probably soon) be the title of a page that you only have to fill. For example, we created a page for useful plants of Europe and the Mediterranean. We also have several lists ready for processing.

We already opened pages for 15.220 species, that you can visualize in Category Species.

Once a list compiled, it must be checked taxon by taxon, in order to eliminate typng errors and replace old names by current names. Auyomatic tools are available to do that.

This work requires some competence in botany, and more specifically in nomenclature. If you don't have such expertise, send your raw list to the administrator of the site. Checking will be done, and then a robot will automatically create pages.

Writing species names

In the taxobox, the author's name is mentioned. In the nomenclature field, the date of publication is mentioned as well. It is useless to mention the author's name elsewhere in the article. It must be recorded here that the author's name is not a part of the scientific name. It is simply a help for nomenclature specialists, who can then distinguish homonyms created by different authors. But the information so given makes sense only if you have personally checked the protologues. In other cases, it is better to mention the author of the flora from where you took the name. Finally, experience shows that quotations of authors' names is often faulty.

In conclusion, don't lose time in reproducing authors' names (and don't lose time in removing them, as it can be done automatically). Authors' names will be added later.

Moerover, page titles only give scientific names without author, in order to simplify them.

If author's names are too long, you can type <br> just before, which will position author's names below the scientific name.

Family names

Families retained for angiosperm plants follow the APG III classification, which has now reached consensus. As for nomenclature, nine families have the specificity of having two validly published names. The International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (Vienna, 2005) prefers old names, with a well established usage, whereas allowing alternative names derived from the name of the type genus. We choosed to use such old names, which is e.g. the case of Mabberley.

Articles of the Code :

18.5. The following names, of long usage, are treated as validly published: Compositae (Asteraceae; type, Aster L.); Cruciferae (Brassicaceae; type, Brassica L.); Gramineae (Poaceae; type, Poa L.); Guttiferae (Clusiaceae; type, Clusia L.); Labiatae (Lamiaceae; type, Lamium L.); Leguminosae (Fabaceae; type, Faba Mill. [= Vicia L.]); Palmae (Arecaceae; type, Areca L.); Papilionaceae (Fabaceae; type, Faba Mill.); Umbelliferae (Apiaceae; type, Apium L.). When the Papilionaceae are regarded as a family distinct from the remainder of the Leguminosae, the name Papilionaceae is conserved against Leguminosae.

18.6. The use, as alternatives, of the family names indicated in parentheses in Art. 18.5 is authorized.

Names of suprafamily taxa

For seed plants, we chosed to limit ourselves to mentioning family and order. Plants in the same order often share common characters or properties, which is informative from the point of view of plant uses. It is no longer the case with taxa superior to the order, the knowledge of which has more to do with general biological culture than knowledge of species.

For other taxa, we chosed to add to family and order the name of a superior taxon, irrespective of its rank. Classification is unstable at those levels, and there is no consensus. Anyway, names are only known by specialists, and have a limited interest as far as uses are concerned. Templates with different colours have been created :

grey colour :

• Fungi
• Lichens

yellow-green colour : non-seed plants :

• Phaeophyceae (brown algae)
• Chlorophyta
• Charophyta
• Marchantiophyta
• Bryophyta
• Lycopodiophyta
• Pteridophyta

blue colour :

• Cyanobacteria