Is there such an abbreviation??

[Thomas Lammers]

At 10:20 AM 9/29/00 -0500, Dick Jensen wrote:
>On Fri, 29 Sep 2000, Michael Gerdes wrote:
>
> > thanks for your reply. spp. refering to all or extant species, does this
> > include those species that have been moved to other genera? such
> as >Agrostis spp. would that include Apera spica-venti since it was
> Agrostis >spica-venti
>
>That's an interesting question.  My immediate response is that Agrostis
>spp. would not include Apera spica-venti - the latter is no longer viewed
>as a species of Agrostis and, if the move to Apera reflects information
>about phylogenetic relationships (which it should), it never was a species
>of Agrostis (someone just misplaced it).

Short answer: any statement such as "Agrostis spp." carries the unstated
proviso "in the sense of [some authority]", i.e., "the species included in
Agrostis as circumscribed by Hitchcock & Chase (1950)".

Remember, that only certain things having to do with nomenclature are
covered by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.  Issues of
circumscription, synonymization, and so forth are largely outside its scope
(unless they affect issues of priority of names.)




Thomas G. Lammers, Ph.D.

Assistant Professor and Curator of the Herbarium (OSH)
Department of Biology and Microbiology
University of Wisconsin Oshkosh
Oshkosh, Wisconsin 54901-8640 USA

e-mail:       lammers at uwosh.edu
phone:      920-424-7085
fax:           920-424-1101

Plant systematics; classification, nomenclature, evolution, and
biogeography of the Campanulaceae s. lat.
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