Ploidy and Fertility

Well, you were living in the real world, whereas a handful of botanists
were trying to make "Amaryllis" the genus name of the South American bulbs
we now call "Hippeastrum."

From the 1930s onward, Uphoff in 1938 proposed that Amaryllis really
referrerd to the New World species. Dr. Hamilton P. Traub then supported
this determinedly for the rest of his life. Traub carried on a lengthy
campaign to get the South African species Amaryllis belladonna moved into a
different genus (any different genus!) He and several other botanists
discovered and named many new species from South America, putting them all
in the genus Amaryllis. Traub was the editor of HERBERTIA and PLANT LIFE,
in which journal (same journal, a couple of name changes along the way)
most of the papers describing these new species were published.

The species for the most part were quite valid new taxons, so that part of
things was OK. The choice of genus name was the bone of contention.

In the 1980s, that effort by Traub et al. fell apart on several
fronts: an international commission ruled that Amaryllis applied to the
South African species (still monotypic at that time, I believe) and that
the New World species that had be named as Amaryllis must be called
Hippeastrum. Dr. Traub passed away at about the same time. Actually, Dr
Traub came close to "proving" that the original type for Amaryllis was in
fact a New World species, or at least that there was great doubt as to just
what plant the type specimen for the original description actually was.

Peter Goldblatt proposed formally in 1984 that Amaryllis be recognized as
the name for the African species, and that a new type that was clearly the
Cape Belladonna be designated. The commission ruled that the many years of
usage of Amaryllis for the African plant were to be given precedence
(regardless of the particular facts of Linneaus's original specimen), so
they followed Goldblatt's proposal and "conserved" Amaryllis as the name
for the African plant and at the same time they conserved Hippeastrum as
the name for the many New World species.

Now HERBERTIA is edited by Dr. Alan Meerow, and the journal of course
treats the New World species as Hippeastrum. Alan has indeed been
co-author on two of the main papers handling the formal transfer of those
South American species names to Hippeastrum.

I have been looking at as many of the transfer papers as I could find to
set up a reasonable (but temporary) list of species names in Hippeastrum in
one place -- at least until Alan and his collaborator, Dr. Julie Dutilh of
Brazil, get a formal revision of the genus published. That partial list is
sitting on my web site now at:
http://shieldsgardens.com/amaryllids/…

This is indeed ancient history. It was in the course of reviewing that
history, to get the authors sorted out for my list of Hippeastrum species,
that I came across the other paper. I followed the debates in PLANT
LIFE/HERBERTIA from about 1970 on as a member of the APLS. I'll tell you
this: the world of taxonomy is a tough place! Those guys go out for blood.

Best wishes,
Jim Shields

*************************************************
Jim Shields USDA Zone 5 Shields Gardens, Ltd.
P.O. Box 92 WWW: http://www.shieldsgardens.com/
Westfield, Indiana 46074, USA
Tel. ++1-317-867-3344 or toll-free 1-866-449-3344 in USA