NATURE to save taxonomy!

[Peter Stevens]

>I, too, was at the St Louis meeting, and as JeF knows, the proposals
>for registration were defeated as much because of the personalities
>involved as anything else.  As many people are commenting, the needs
>driving ideas of registration are real, the challenge is to
>implement them.  Ron Gatrelle's little list is a place to start.


Peter S.

For non-botanists - the Botanical Code that resulted from that
meeting has a black cover and is (affectionately?) known as the
Tombstone Code...





>NATURE obviously has no idea what it is talking about: The CD-ROM of the
>Index kewensis shows that at least for flowering plants in its long history
>this Journal published only 9 new taxa, the last one in 1946...
>
>During the last Botanical Congress in St. Louis (1999) the idea of central
>registration of botanical names in view of the preceding commotion, papers
>and meetings was surprisingly briefly discussed. Here at least were
>hundreds of people with real, hands-on experience, and they didn't like the
>idea at all. All proposals were roundly defeated, and now Nature wants to
>start another round?
>
>This is going to be interesting, although tedious to have all the arguments
>pro and contra repeated.
>
>JeF
>Dr. J.F. Veldkamp
>Nationaal Herbarium Nederland, Universiteit Leiden branch
>POB 9514
>2300 RA Leiden
>The Netherlands
>e-mail: veldkamp at nhn.leidenuniv.nl
>tel.: + 31 0715 27 35 49
>fax: + 31 0715 27 35 11
>home tel.: + 31 0715 15 32 87