Plant Genera placement in Family

[John McNeill]

On 28 March, =46rancesco Porcelli wrote:

>I am not able to verify many of these references because there are
>historical ones and/or only parts of the host plants was collected.
>In order to use the bulk of these data I need to know if a lot of
>plants species were moved out of a Genus into another during the last
>30 years.  Excuse me for this strange question but I am an
>entomologist and I am not very deep in plants taxonomical facts.

The quick answer is that it all depends on the genus.  Some have
stayed virtually unaltered in their delimitation since their
establishment (under our current nomenclature) by Linnaeus in 1753,
but others have changed dramatically (e.g. in the ferns and grasses).
And, of course, enormous numbers of new genera and species have been
described over the years in botany as in entomology.

You do not indicate if this is a regionally based study or a
world-wide one;  if the former and if the region is reasonably
well-explored, the simplest method would seem to be to get hold of
relevant recent Floras/Manuals in a general biology library and check
your name against the work's index of accepted names and synonyms.
If world-wide, you have more problems, there is no electronic (or
other) list of current accepted names with or without synonyms of
any plant group.

John McNeill

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From: John McNeill, Director, Royal Ontario Museum, 100 Queen's Park,
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