There are those who regard nomenclatural matters as mattes of right
and wrong: in their view, there is only one right way to do things. I
don’t look at it that way at all.

I’ve been thinking a lot about winter aconites lately, and these
seemingly simple little flowers offer some examples of just how
opinion comes to influence nomenclature.

In the heading for this post I’ve deliberately used the provocative,
benignly provocative I hope, combination Eranthis hyemalis ‘Guinea
Gold’.

Those of you who know your winter aconites know that ‘Guinea Gold’ was
raised in the early twentieth century and presented to the gardening
public as a hybrid between what were then known as Eranthis hyemalis
and E. cilicica. I believe it was Bowles who coined the name
tubergenii for the hybrid group. Until recently, the usual citation of
the name would have been Eranthis x tubergenii ‘Guinea Gold’.

Some modern botanists regard Eranthis hyemalis and E. cilicica as
conspecific. In that view, ‘Guinea Gold’ is not a hybrid – at any
rate, not an interspecific hybrid. That allows it to be cited as
Eranthis hyemalis ‘Guinea Gold’: both parents of this cultivar are of
the species Eranthis hyemalis.

There is another formula one encounters: Eranthis hyemalis Tubergenii
Group ‘Guinea Gold’. I’m not sure what to make of this combination: I
assume it is tacit recognition of the existence of more than one
‘Guinea Gold’. In this view, if I’ve got it right, although the
original ‘Guinea Gold’ was a clone, this combination of names
recognizes that not only does more than one plant now go around under
the name ‘Guinea Gold’, but also that the true, original plant is
seemingly lost in the crowd.

Some people throw up their hands in the face of such complexities. I
relish them as a way of attaining more finely nuanced expressions of
the relationships involved. Is one right and the others wrong? I
don’t think so. Like everything else in science, the scientific basis
of nomenclature is an if…then proposition. If you believe that
Eranthis hyemalis and E. cilicica are discrete species, you write
Eranthis x tubergenii ‘Guinea Gold’.

If you believe E. hyemails and E. cilicica are conspecific, you write
Eranthis hyemalis ‘Guinea Gold’.

If you believe the plants going around under the name ‘Guinea Gold’
cannot with certainty be attributed to the original clone, then you
write Eranthis Tubergenii Group ‘Guinea Gold’ or even Eranthis
hyemalis Tubergenii Group ‘Guinea Gold’.

But is one of these right and the others wrong? Get out the boxing
gloves!