CHAPTER VI 



BOTANICAL NOMENCLATUEE 



The problem of selecting a name for an organism is a very ancient one. 

 Early plant names were simple nouns in the language in use by various bota- 

 nists. As likenesses and differences were more clearly realized, adjectives 

 were applied to distinguish between closely related groups. In the course of 

 centuries these adjectives became attached to nouns in a definite and usually 

 stable manner. During the period from the introdviction of printing to the 

 middle of the eighteenth century, the noun gradually took on the generic con- 

 cept, and the group of adjectives, the specific concept. As this usage became 

 more prevalent, a binomial nomenclature was approached, until Linnaeus in his 

 Species Plant arum of 1753 used it almost universally. 



The last half of the eighteenth century was predominantly one of ex- 

 ploration and description of many new plants and animals. The same or- 

 ganism was often named more than once by workers in ignorance of the pub- 

 lications of others. Then the problem of which name to choose became in- 

 creasingly urgent. In general, the principle of priority developed, by which 

 the oldest binomial name for a group was chosen. During the nineteenth cen- 

 tury, these problems became increasingly (difficult, and authors developed 

 codes of rules for their own use. As a result of this, by the close of the 

 nineteenth century varying practice for handling the same situation had 

 grown up in various countries. In America we had two more or less divergent 

 systems which caused much confusion, as one set of workers used one set of 

 names for their plants while another group used different names for the 

 same plants. 



An attempt to reach a compromise was made in the last decade of the 

 century, but this was ineffective. At the International Congress at Paris in 

 1900, a committee was appointed to draft a code and report to the Congress 

 at Vienna in 1905. This code, adopted after much discussion, forms the basis 

 for our present code. It was extensively amended at Brussels in 1910 and at 

 Cambridge (England) in 1930. 



The official edition of the Code with the 1930 amendments has not yet been 

 published. The most active member of the editorial committee died shortly 

 after the Congress. I have been unable to secure from the surviving member, 

 information as to the probable time of publication. 



As this book goes to press, A. B. Rendle, Jour. Bot. Brit. For. 72 : Supple- 

 ment 1-29, June, 1934) has published his version of the Code with the approval 

 of the surviving member of the editorial committee, so that it is probable that 

 Rendle 's version will not differ materially from the official version. In gen- 

 eral, Rendle 's version has been reproduced in the following pages, but I have 



75 



