James Waddick wrote: > Dear all; > I noticed (after posting of course) that I spelled this onion as > Allium triquetum and it 'looked ' wrong. A quick googling gave some > 'hits' under this spelling, but even more as Allium triquetRum. Allium > experts- care to vote? > > A. triquetum or A. triquetrum ? Dear Jim: Questions of accuracy aren't often satisfactorily settled by voting. IPNI (the International Plant Names Index), operated under the auspices of authorities at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew <http://www.rbgkew.org.uk/>, The Harvard University Herbaria, <http://www.huh.harvard.edu/> and the Australian National Herbarium <http://155.187.10.12:80/anh/> , provides definitive spellings for most plant names at http://www.ipni.org/index.html Note the correct spelling of this allium name at http://ipni.org/ipni/IpniServlet/… When IPNI needs supplementing, I recommend turning to the Missouri Botanical Garden's W3Tropicos database at http://mobot.mobot.org/W3T/Search/vast.html My friend Hubert Agback, of the University of Uppsala, one of the world's most distinguished botanic bibliographers, writes that he finds IPNI and W3Tropicos invaluable and adds: "I also value very much the Plants database for North American plants maintained by USDA. It is found at http://plants.usda.gov/ Unfortunately this database is not fully harmonized with the great Flora of North America project. For cultivars, the Google search engine is invaluable." You will find the correct spelling of Allium triquetrum at all three of these megadatabases: IPNI, W3Tropicos and Plants. By design, of course, the Google and other search engines deliberately perpetuate all misspellings, as they should. The Plants database is maintained, by the way, in Beltsville, Maryland, where it is a beautiful day today. With best wishes to all, Harry Dewey, Beltsville, Maryland USA zone 7a