114 
NEWS OE OTllEK SOCIETIES 
REPORT ON THE INTERNATIONAL BOTANICAL C0NGKE8S, 
STOCKHOLM, JULY 1950 
The Seventh International Botanical Congress was held in Stockholm 
from July 12th to the 20th, 1950, and was attended by more than 14(XJ 
botanists from most parts of the world. It was preceded and followed 
by a rich and varied programme of excursions in Siveden which had 
been planned many months before; during the Congress itself, other 
General Excursions were held, notably to the islands of the Stockholm 
Archipelago. To attend such a gathering is a i-ather bewildering and, 
at times, frustrating experience, for the most obvious value is in })er- 
sonal meetings and in interchange of ideas, for the facilitation of which, 
however, the very full {Drogramme of lecture meetings was obviously not 
designed! (One had the impression, indeed, that the purj^ose of the 
Sectional meetings might have been better fulfilled by having a greater 
proportion of less formal discussions on previously selected themes in- 
troduced bj' specialists ; though the difficulties of organisation of such a 
programme might well have been too great.) 
The Section for Nomenclature, faced with the necessity of consider- 
ing a host of suggested amendments to the International Buies, began 
its meetings some days before the Congress officially opened, and made 
a vain attempt to finish these deliberations before the main pro- 
gramme. In these sessions, where clashes between opposing views were 
inevitable, it was interesting, if at the same time rather disaijpointing, 
to find %hat botanists are no more gifted than statesmen in reaching 
agreed solutions of problems involving outstanding differences of 
opinion. The British participants were particularly interested in a 
number of proposals, of which the following were hotly debated and 
may be of most general interest to members: — 
1. The question of nomina specifica conservanda (or rejicienda, or 
exchulenda); all suggestions for the adoption of such (including a seem- 
ingly mild compromise measure) were rejected, but, at the last moment; 
a Committee was set up to report on the question at the next Congress. 
One felt here that the session would have benefited from the presence 
and comments of a larger number of ‘practical’ botanists, involved in the 
day-to-day use of common plant names ! 
2. The retention of compulsory Latin diagnoses for the publication 
of new taxa ; upheld against some pressure, chiefly from algologists. 
3. A new rule concerning the nomenclature of subspecies and varie- 
ties was adopted, which required that any subdivision of a species which 
includes the type must he designated by a repetition of the specific 
epithet without citation of an authority. 
The most important constructive step arising out of the Nomencla- 
ture and Taxonomy meetings was the establishment of the Interna- 
tional Association for Plant Taxonomy, with its office at Utrecht; this 
new body should do much to further international taxonomic and nomen- 
clatural co-operation, and help in solving points of dispute, e.g. in in- 
terpreting the International Rules. 
