Linnaean Plant Name Typification Project

理想的情况是，动植物的学名多年来一直保持稳定使用，因此可以作为生物世界知识的有效索引工具。争议确实时有发生，但这些争议主要是通过应用所谓的“类型”方法解决的，即将博物馆藏品中的特定标本确定为特定名称的类型，用于每个已发表的科学名称。因此，关于名称适用性的问题或混淆可以通过参考实际样本来解决。不幸的是，对于卡尔·林奈的8900个命名的植物物种和变种中的大多数，没有明确固定的模式标本，尽管林奈的出版物被赋予了作为动植物物种科学命名的普遍起点的重要性。林奈植物名称类型化项目旨在对林奈(1707-1778年)出版的所有植物名称的类型化(模式标本分配)进行彻底的评估。波特·劳里博士和詹姆斯·刘易斯博士以及一名博士后助理将与大英博物馆(自然历史)的查尔斯·贾维斯博士合作，林奈的藏品和图书馆现在就存放在那里。研究结果将发表在带有注释的目录中，该目录还将包含详细的分类学注释和所有相关命名文献的完整引用。结果还将纳入为北美植物志项目和其他植物区系企业维护的计算机数据库。这将为持续和稳定地应用这些重要和广泛使用的植物名称奠定基础，其中许多植物名称适用于农作物和其他具有重要经济意义的物种，并将作为所有必须处理林奈物种名称的植物学家的基本参考。

The scientific names of plants and animals ideally remain stable in usage over the years, and thus serve as efficient and effective indexing devices for knowledge of the biological world. Disputes do arise from time to time, but these are settled largely through the application of the so-called "type" method, the identification of a particular specimen in a museum collection as the type of a particular name, for each and every published scientific name. Question or confusion about the applicability of a name can thus be resolved by reference to an actual specimen. For the majority of Carl Linnaeus's 8,900 named species and varieties of plants, unfortunately, there are no clearly fixed type specimens, despite the importance accorded Linnaeus's publications as the universal starting-point for scientific naming of plant and animal species. The Linnaean Plant Name Typification Project is designed to provide a thorough assessment of the typification (assignment of type specimens) of all of the plant names published by Linnaeus (1707-1778). Drs. Porter Lowry and James Reveal and a post- doctoral associate will work with Dr. Charles Jarvis of the British Museum (Natural History) where Linnaeus's collections and library now reside. The results will be published in an annotated catalogue that will also contain detailed taxonomic notes and the complete citation of all relevant nomenclatural literature. Results will also be incorporated into computer databases maintained for the Flora North America project and other floristic enterprises. This will establish a basis for the consistent and stable application of these important and widely used plant names, many of which apply to crop plants and other economically significant species, and will serve as an essential reference for all botanists who must deal with Linnaean species names.