Thanks Mary Sue! (and all that answered!) I am so glad to have found such a technically oriented group. Yes, I have used Tropicos & IPNI- but there was no method to the madness after reading the wiki on the Drimia merge. I burned up a lot of time looking for this one plant - meaning it's proper name. No consensus. For instance - using Tropicos- and testing with Clivia - I get a lot more than 6 Clivia species choices. Very frustrating if you don't know the synonymy. Perhaps I am using Tropicos wrong. I didn't see a choice to filter out Clivia cyrtantiflora or C. sulfurea. In the choices I used this weekend; I think I like Encyclopedia of Life the best. http://www.eol.org/ Regards,Lisa -----Original Message----- From: pbs-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org [mailto:pbs-bounces@lists.ibiblio.org] On Behalf Of Mary Sue Ittner Sent: Sunday, February 28, 2010 6:12 PM To: pbs@lists.ibiblio.org Subject: [pbs] Botanical Names and Schizobasis We've recently been looking at the names we are using on the wiki thanks to David Pilling who continues to find mistakes. It can be very challenging trying to figure out which is the correct name when you can find so many different choices when looking on the Internet. And sometimes when a name is revised, not everyone accepts the new name or further study does not reinforce the revision. We try to add synonyms to the wiki, but sometimes it gets a bit ridiculous. For example there is this entry in the wiki: Amianthium muscaetoxicum is found in data bases with many alternate spellings. It may have been published at one time with this spelling, but now Amianthium muscitoxicum seems to be preferred. Other synonyms you can find are Amiantanthus muscaetoxicum, Chrosperma muscitoxicum, Melanthium muscaetoxicum, Melanthium muscitoxicum, Zigadenus muscaetoxicum, Zigadenus muscitoxicum, Zigadenus muscitoxicus, and Zygadenus muscaetoxicus. If there is a question I look in three or four places and hope I can find some agreement. Jim gave two of them, the Tropicos data base and IPNI. In the beginning people suggested IPNI, but unfortunately it often doesn't give you a clue of what the current thinking is, just tells you the published names. Kew has a checklist for Monocot names that seems to be relatively current, but is not always in agreement with others. Sometimes it lists who agrees and who doesn't which is useful. http://apps.kew.org/wcsp/home.do Searching for the name that Lisa asked about I found that Kew still accepts Schizobasis intricata Schizobasis intricata (Baker) Baker, J. Bot. 12: 368 (1874). This name is accepted. But they also list the reference for Drimia intricata Germishuizen, G. & Meyer, N.L. (eds.) (2003). Plants of Southern Africa: an annotated checklist. Strelitzia 14.: i-vi, 1-1231. National Botanical Institute, Pretoria. [as Drimia intricata] This leads me to another data base I use for African plants: http://ville-ge.ch/musinfo/bd/… If you look at it you will find that the name they are accepting is Drimia intricata (Baker) J.C.Manning & Goldblatt So in summary you find that originally it was published as Schizobasis intricata, named by Baker and that Kew still recognizes that name. The two data bases sponsored by institutions where the two men who renamed it work are supporting Drimia intricata, renamed by Manning and Goldblatt. Others on this list would say as long as you add the name of the author behind which ever name you use you'll be correct. Although this is usually true, if the author did not use the accepted spelling when naming the plant sometimes that name gets changed as well. Mary Sue