The Plant List – Getting a Handle on Accepted Latin Names

By Gardennia nutii
I came across an amazing project this morning: The Plant List. The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Missouri Botanical Garden are working together to list all known plant species and “provide the author or the name, the original place of publication, and whether the name is accepted or is a synonym for another name from data resources.” This project is part of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation which was created to help retain world plant diversity. The tool was released in December 2010, and this first version includes species of Vascular plant (flowering plants, conifers, ferns and their allies) and of Bryophytes (mosses and liverworts).

I learned this morning that the lovely Spanish fir (Abies pinsapo) I acquired this fall was originally published in 1838 at a university in Geneva, Switzerland (long way from Spain).