The Names Of Plants.pdf

The rules of botanical nomenclature
which are to be rejected because they are taxonomic synonyms used in a sense which
does not include the type of the name, or are earlier nomenclatural synonyms based
on the same type, or are homonyms or orthographic variants.
The Code also recommends the ways in which names should be spelt or transliterated
into Latin form in order to avoid what it refers to as ‘orthographic variants’.
The variety found amongst botanical names includes differences in spelling which
are, however, correct because their authors chose the spellings when they published
them and differences which are not correct because they contain any of a range of
defects which have become specified in the Code. This is a problem area in horticultural
literature, where such variants are commonplace. It is clearly desirable that a
plant name should have a single, constant and correct spelling, but this has not been
achieved in all fields and reaches its worst condition in the labelling of plants for
sale in some nurseries.
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