Re: HIST: Swerti, the Name

In a message dated 3/1/05 5:33:47 PM Eastern Standard Time, 
rpries@sbcglobal.net writes:

<<  Cultivar names once accepted are forever no matter whether they were 
misspelled or not. Today it is against the rules to make a cultivar name out of a 
botanical name but before 1959 many names such as 'Spuria Maritima' were 
accepted as cultivar names. >>

And here I think we also want to remember that these Check Lists are the 
result of very smart people trying to sort, and yes, in some cases confer order 
on, an enormous amount of literature, botanical and horticultural, some of it 
predating Linnaeus by close to two centuries. 

I do think we need to remember when--datewise-- the AIS system of 
registration came into being and how long it took to get things running the way they run 
now. A lot of the names out there were never actually "applied" for and 
"approved" as such, the compilers ferreted them out of where ever they had been 
published--catalogs, articles, books, going back to the Renaissance--and tried to 
sort them out to see which could be said to have priority. The whole modern 
system fo registration did not come into being until the mid-1920s, and it is 
still subject to revisions.

Some names included in the 1929 Check List were concocted by the Registrar's 
Office in an effort to establish order amid the chaos of duplicate 
pre-existing names, including, probably the one Robert has mentioned, along with 'Spuria 
Aurea' and such others. This  practice was later abandonned. All these things 
are explained in the introductions to the 1929 and 1939 Check Lists or the 
early Bulletins.

I've more than once heard it said that we modern genuises are obliged to redo 
this and that because the folks who made up the early Check Lists "did not 
know what they were doing." I suggest that whereas they were not without fault 
--nor guile --nor agendas-- to suggest that they were at sea or ignorant is 
just plain codswallop. 

Cordially,

Anner Whitehead
Richmond VA USA

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