BOTANICAL MUSEUM LEAFLETS 
HARVARD UNIVERSITY 
CamprinGr, Massacuusetts, November 20, 1958 Vor. 18, No. 5 
HOW ABSURD CAN A 
NOMENCLATURAL PROPOSAL BE? 
BY 
LesuiEk A. Garay anp Ricuarp Evans ScHULTES 
Boranists who are interested in plants as living things 
and not as pretexts for legalistic juggling of nomencla- 
ture are becoming increasingly exasperated with the 
growing amount of attention paid in our congresses and 
in our journals to hair-splitting and often superficial in- 
terpretations of the International Code of Botanical 
Nomenclature, whose basic reason for existence is pre- 
cisely to standardize nomenclature and make such quib- 
bling unnecessary. We would be the first to recognize 
that rules and regulations are essential for the standard- 
ization of nomenclature, yet we rebel at the threat that 
the activity of other taxonomists become more and more 
subservient to the confusion wrought by those whose 
only interest in plants seems to be the legalism surround- 
ing the clarification of their proper naming. 
Taxon, the journal of the International Association 
for Plant Taxonomy, has recently been given over largely 
to articles on nomenclature by individuals and commit- 
tees. It is with one part of a recent article that we wish 
to deal in this note, our primary purpose being to point 
out one of the many absurdities which our congresses are 
being asked to consider. We refer to the ‘‘Report of the 
Committee for Spermatophyta. Conservation of generic 
[181 | 
