Re: Buddleia or Buddleja

It seems that Linnaeus spelt it Buddleja when he published it in Species Plantarum in 1753. The name honored the English botanist Adam Buddle (1660-1715). The normal practice when forming a genus name from a personal name ending in a vowel is to simply add an -a, as in Brownea (after Browne), which infers a latinization of his name in the nominative case as Browneus. (contrast with names ending in consonants, giving nominative -ius, and genus names like Deutzia).
 
But the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (online at www.bgbm.fu-berlin.de/iapt/nomenclature/code/tokyo-e/) retrospectively allows a lot of latitude to authors and especially Linnaeus as to the ways in which they chose to latinize people's names. Linnaeus obviously chose to latinize Buddle as Buddlejus, giving the genus name Buddleja. This seems to be accepted by all the more recent reference books, e.g. the New R.H.S. Dictionary of Gardening. But should it be? Consider this clause of the I.C.B.N.:
60.5. When a name has been published in a work where the letters u, v or i, j are used interchangeably or in any other way incompatible with modern practices (one of those letters is not used or only in capitals), those letters are to be transcribed in conformity with modern botanical usage.
As you may be aware, i and j were not distinguished in print until after about 1600, and in many European languages as well as in Latin j is pronounced like the English y, which when it falls between two vowels is hardly different from i. And Stearn's 'Botanical Latin' makes the following point:
". . . however. . the eighteenth-century printers of Linnaeus's works employed i and j and u and v somewhat indiscriminately. At this period i often came at the beginning of a word, even though the consonant j was intended and j often within the word, usually after a vowel but sometimes after a consonant, even though the vowel i was intended, as in RHEEDJA and DELPHINJUM."
I thought that Buddleja was specifically mentioned in the ICBN as an example, but it's not there in the current edition, so I'm not sure of the reasoning followed by compilers of recent references. I would have thought that 'conformity with modern botanical usage' would make us decide in favor of Buddleia.
 
Can anyone enlighten us further?
 
Tony Rodd
Sydney, Australia
 
p.s. - as to Oldenlandia grandis (syn. O. arbuscula) I photographed a nice plant of this in the Melbourne Botanic Gardens in 1980 but have never seen it anywhere else. The plant was flowering at only about 2 ft high. There are no listings for Oldenlandia in 'The Aussie Plant Finder 2000/2001".
 
----- Original Message -----
From: n*@plantsoup.com
To: m*@ucdavis.edu
Sent: Saturday, July 06, 2002 9:24 AM
Subject: Buddleia or Buddleja

I don't want to start an argument here but why do I see butterfly
bush referred to as both buddleia and buddleja?  Which is correct?  I
see the former more often than the latter.
--
+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

Nan Sterman Plant Soup (TM)

205 Cole Ranch Road
Olivenhain, CA 92024 760.634.2902 (voice)
N*@PlantSoup.Com 760.634.2957 (fax)

+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=+=

Other Mailing lists | Author Index | Date Index | Subject Index | Thread Index