registration of plant names

[JOSEPH E. LAFERRIERE]

    I thank the good folks at MO for their fine and thoughtful essay
on the registration of plant names. I concur. I wish to add one
comment.
   My question is: Under the registration proposal as currently
envisioned, how can a reader tell from looking at a newly published
name in a journal whether or not it has been registered? Under the
current system, I can tell withing 30 seconds whether or not
a new name has been validly published. I simply have to ask 1) Is there
a Latin description or diagnosis? and 2) Is there a proper type
designation, including institution code? Under the registration
proposal, as I understand it, I now have to ask whether the
editors fulfilled the registration requirements. Even if I
check the name against the official list on the www, and the answer is
no, the possibility remains that the name was indeed registered
with the committee, but so recently that the committee has
not yet had an opportunity to add the name to the list.
  The current system is not perfect, but I feel this is the wrong
way to change it. Certainly some mechanism could be devised where
people voluntarily could alert the editors of Index Kewensis, etc., to obscure
publications. I myself once published a recombination statement as
a footnote to an ethnobotanical paper. I noticed a few years later
that Index Kewensis had overlooked it. I therefore wrote to the
editors at K and pointed it out to them.


--
Dr. Joseph E. Laferriere
"Computito ergo sum ...  I link therefore I am."