Descriptive botanical names

Last updated March 24, 2019

Descriptive botanical names are scientific names of groups of plants that are irregular, not being derived systematically from the name of a type genus. They may describe some characteristics of the group in general or may be a name already in existence before regularised scientific nomenclature.

Botanical nomenclature is the formal, scientific naming of plants. It is related to, but distinct from taxonomy. Plant taxonomy is concerned with grouping and classifying plants; botanical nomenclature then provides names for the results of this process. The starting point for modern botanical nomenclature is Linnaeus' Species Plantarum of 1753. Botanical nomenclature is governed by the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN), which replaces the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN). Fossil plants are also covered by the code of nomenclature.

In biological classification, especially zoology, the type genus is the genus which defines a biological family and the root of the family name.

Above the rank of family

Descriptive names above the rank of family are governed by Article 16^[1] of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN), which rules that a name above the rank of family may be either be ‘automatically typified’ (such as Magnoliophyta and Magnoliopsida from the type genus Magnolia) or be descriptive.

The International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN) is the set of rules and recommendations dealing with the formal botanical names that are given to plants, fungi and a few other groups of organisms, all those "traditionally treated as algae, fungi, or plants". It was formerly called the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN); the name was changed at the International Botanical Congress in Melbourne in July 2011 as part of the Melbourne Code which replaced the Vienna Code of 2005.

Descriptive names of this type may be used unchanged at different ranks (without modifying the suffix). These descriptive plant names are decreasing in importance, becoming less common than ‘automatically typified names’, but many are still in use, such as:

Plantae, Algae, Musci, Fungi, Embryophyta, Tracheophyta, Spermatophyta, Gymnospermae, Coniferae, Coniferales, Angiospermae, Monocotyledones, Dicotyledones, etc.

Many of these descriptive names have a very long history, often preceding Carl Linnaeus. Some are Classical Latin common nouns in the nominative plural, meaning for instance ‘the plants’, ‘the seaweeds’, ‘the mosses’. Like all names above the rank of family, these names follow the Latin grammatical rules of nouns in the plural, and are written with an initial capital letter.

Carl Linnaeus, also known after his ennoblement as Carl von Linné, was a Swedish botanist, physician, and zoologist who formalised binomial nomenclature, the modern system of naming organisms. He is known as the "father of modern taxonomy". Many of his writings were in Latin, and his name is rendered in Latin as Carolus Linnæus.

Classical Latin is the form of the Latin language recognized as standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and the Roman Empire. In some later periods, it was regarded as "good" Latin, with later versions being viewed as debased or corrupt. The word Latin is now taken by default as meaning "Classical Latin", so that, for example, modern Latin textbooks describe Classical Latin. Marcus Tullius Cicero and his contemporaries of the late republic, while using lingua latina and sermo latinus to mean the Latin language as opposed to Greek or other languages, and sermo vulgaris or sermo vulgi to refer to the vernacular, referred to the speech they valued most and in which they wrote as latinitas, "Latinity", with the implication of good. Sometimes it was called sermo familiaris, "speech of the good families", sermo urbanus, "speech of the city" or rarely sermo nobilis, "noble speech". But besides latinitas, it was mainly called latine (adverb), "in good Latin", or latinius, "in better Latin".

The nominative case , subjective case, straight case or upright case is one of the grammatical cases of a noun or other part of speech, which generally marks the subject of a verb or the predicate noun or predicate adjective, as opposed to its object or other verb arguments. Generally, the noun "that is doing something" is in the nominative, and the nominative is often the form listed in dictionaries.

At the rank of family

Article 18.5^[2] of the ICN allows a descriptive name, of long usage, for the following eight families. For each of these families there also exists a name based on the name of an included genus (an alternative name that is also allowed, here in parentheses):

Compositae = "composites" (alternative name: Asteraceae, based on the genus Aster)
Cruciferae = "cross-bearers" (alternative name: Brassicaceae, based on the genus Brassica )
Gramineae = "grasses" (alternative name: Poaceae, based on the genus Poa )
Guttiferae = "latex-carriers" (alternative name: Clusiaceae, based on the genus Clusia )
Labiatae = "lipped ones" (alternative name: Lamiaceae, based on the genus Lamium )
Leguminosae = "legumes" (alternative name: Fabaceae, based on the genus Faba, now considered a section of genus Vicia )
Palmae = "palms" (alternative name: Arecaceae, based on the genus Areca )
Umbelliferae = "parasol-bearers" (alternative name: Apiaceae, based on the genus Apium )

Aster is a genus of perennial flowering plants in the family Asteraceae. Its circumscription has been narrowed, and it now encompasses around 180 species, all but one of which are restricted to Eurasia; many species formerly in Aster are now in other genera of the tribe Astereae. Aster amellus is the type species of the genus and the family Asteraceae.

Brassica is a genus of plants in the mustard family (Brassicaceae). The members of the genus are informally known as cruciferous vegetables, cabbages, or mustard plants. Crops from this genus are sometimes called cole crops—derived from the Latin caulis, denoting the stem or stalk of a plant.

Poa is a genus of about 500 species of grasses, native to the temperate regions of both hemispheres. Common names include meadow-grass, bluegrass, tussock, and speargrass. Poa (πόα) is Greek for "fodder". Poa are members of the Pooideae subfamily of the Poaceae family.

Subfamily

Special provision has been made in Article 19.8 for the plant subfamily name Papilionoideae to be an alternative name of the subfamily Faboideae,^[3] because the family Papilionaceae had previously been conserved when many botanists considered it to be a separate family from Fabaceae (Leguminosae).^[4] This name is not based on any plant genus named Papilio (a butterfly), but is a descriptive name meaning that the plant has butterfly-like flowers.

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Family is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy; it is classified between order and genus. A family may be divided into subfamilies, which are intermediate ranks between the ranks of family and genus. The official family names are Latin in origin; however, popular names are often used: for example, walnut trees and hickory trees belong to the family Juglandaceae, but that family is commonly referred to as being the "walnut family".

In biological classification, the order is

a taxonomic rank used in the classification of organisms and recognized by the nomenclature codes. Other well-known ranks are life, domain, kingdom, phylum, class, family, genus, and species, with order fitting in between class and family. An immediately higher rank, superorder, may be added directly above order, while suborder would be a lower rank.
a taxonomic unit, a taxon, in that rank. In that case the plural is orders.

The Fabaceae or Leguminosae, commonly known as the legume, pea, or bean family, are a large and economically important family of flowering plants. It includes trees, shrubs, and perennial or annual herbaceous plants, which are easily recognized by their fruit (legume) and their compound, stipulate leaves. Many legumes have characteristic flowers and fruits. The family is widely distributed, and is the third-largest land plant family in terms of number of species, behind only the Orchidaceae and Asteraceae, with about 751 genera and about 19,000 known species. The five largest of the genera are Astragalus, Acacia, Indigofera, Crotalaria, and Mimosa, which constitute about a quarter of all legume species. The ca. 19,000 known legume species amount to about 7% of flowering plant species. Fabaceae is the most common family found in tropical rainforests and in dry forests in the Americas and Africa.

In biological classification, a subfamily is an auxiliary (intermediate) taxonomic rank, next below family but more inclusive than genus. Standard nomenclature rules end subfamily botanical names with "-oideae", and zoological names with "-inae".

In biology, a subgenus is a taxonomic rank directly below genus.

In biology, a tribe is a taxonomic rank above genus, but below family and subfamily. It is sometimes subdivided into subtribes.

In zoological nomenclature, a type species is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen(s). A similar concept is used for suprageneric groups called a type genus.

A botanical name is a formal scientific name conforming to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN) and, if it concerns a plant cultigen, the additional cultivar or Group epithets must conform to the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (ICNCP). The code of nomenclature covers "all organisms traditionally treated as algae, fungi, or plants, whether fossil or non-fossil, including blue-green algae (Cyanobacteria), chytrids, oomycetes, slime moulds and photosynthetic protists with their taxonomically related non-photosynthetic groups ."

Nomenclature codes or codes of nomenclature are the various rulebooks that govern biological taxonomic nomenclature, each in their own broad field of organisms. To an end-user who only deals with names of species, with some awareness that species are assignable to families, it may not be noticeable that there is more than one code, but beyond this basic level these are rather different in the way they work.

In botany, the correct name according to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN) is the one and only botanical name that is to be used for a particular taxon, when that taxon has a particular circumscription, position and rank. Determining whether a name is correct is a complex procedure. The name must be validly published, a process which is defined in no less than 16 Articles of the ICN. It must also be "legitimate", which imposes some further requirements. If there are two or more legitimate names for the same taxon, then the correct name is the one which has priority, i.e. it was published earliest, although names may be conserved if they have been very widely used. Validly published names other than the correct name are called synonyms. Since taxonomists may disagree as to the circumscription, position or rank of a taxon, there can be more than one correct name for a particular plant. These may also be called synonyms.

In botany, an infraspecific name is the scientific name for any taxon below the rank of species, i.e. an infraspecific taxon. The scientific names of botanical taxa are regulated by the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN). This specifies a 'three part name' for infraspecific taxa, plus a 'connecting term' to indicate the rank of the name. An example of such a name is Astrophytum myriostigma subvar. glabrum, the name of a subvariety of the species Astrophytum myriostigma.

In botanical nomenclature, author citation refers to citing the person or group of people who validly published a botanical name, i.e. who first published the name while fulfilling the formal requirements as specified by the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN). In cases where a species is no longer in its original generic placement, both the author(s) of the original genus placement and those of the new combination are given.

In biology, a homonym is a name for a taxon that is identical in spelling to another such name, that belongs to a different taxon.

In botany, the phrase ordo naturalis, "natural order", was once used for what today is a family. Its origins lie with Carl Linnaeus who used the word when he referred to natural groups of plants in his lesser-known work, particularly Philosophia Botanica. In his more famous works the Systema Naturae and the Species Plantarum, plants were arranged according to his artificial "Sexual system", and Linnaeus used the word "ordo" for an artificial unit. In those works, only genera and species were "real" taxa.

A conserved name or nomen conservandum is a scientific name that has specific nomenclatural protection. Nomen conservandum is a Latin term, meaning "a name to be conserved". The terms are often used interchangeably, such as by the International Code of Nomenclature for Algae, Fungi, and Plants (ICN), while the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature favours the term "conserved name".

In biological classification, taxonomic rank is the relative level of a group of organisms in a taxonomic hierarchy. Examples of taxonomic ranks are species, genus, family, order, class, phylum, kingdom, domain, etc.

In botanical nomenclature, a validly published name is a name that meets the requirements in the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants for valid publication. Valid publication of a name represents the minimum requirements for a botanical name to exist: terms that appear to be names but have not been validly published are referred to in the ICN as "designations".

References

↑ "International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants". 2012. Article 16
↑ "International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants". 2012. Article 18
↑ "International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants". 2012. Article 19
↑ Lanjouw, J.; Sprague, T.A. (1935). "Additions and Amendments to the International Rules of Botanical Nomenclature, Ed. 3: (35) Appendix Ii. Nomina Familiarum conservanda". Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (Royal Gardens, Kew). 1935 (2): 79–82. doi:10.2307/4107153. JSTOR 4107153.

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[1] "International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants". 2012. Article 16

[2] "International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants". 2012. Article 18

[3] "International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants". 2012. Article 19

[4] Lanjouw, J.; Sprague, T.A. (1935). "Additions and Amendments to the International Rules of Botanical Nomenclature, Ed. 3: (35) Appendix Ii. Nomina Familiarum conservanda". Bulletin of Miscellaneous Information (Royal Gardens, Kew). 1935 (2): 79–82. doi:10.2307/4107153. JSTOR 4107153.