FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
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FRIENDS OF EDGEWOOD NATURAL PRESERVE
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PLANT NAME CHANGES By Toni Corelli Since the first edition of The Jepson Manual in 1993 there have been some official name changes made. Here are the name changes for Edgewood Natural Preserve plants. These changes were accepted by the editors of The Jepson Manual as of October 6, 2003.
For the most part these name changes reflect the current trend to return to the name they were given when they were first described. For this article, I use the two asters that occur at Edgewood (no longer in the genus Aster) as an example of recent name changes and Aster chilensis as an example for how the name change can come about. The New World (North America) species previously classified within Aster are now apportioned among 13 genera. The two species of Aster that occur at Edgewood are now separated into two genera: Symphyotrichum and Eurybia. In order to see how these name changes have recently come about we must follow the trail which will always be within the full scientific name that includes the author information. The accepted new name is Symphyotrichum chilense (Nees) G. L. Nesom. The author names after the species name are interpreted this way. Nees stands for Christian Gottfried Daniel Nees von Esenbeck who published the name Symphyotrichum in “Genera et Species Asterearum” in 1832. G. L. Nesom stands for Guy L. Nesom, who published in the journal Phytologia the article entitled “Review of the Taxonomy of Aster Senus Lato (Asteraceae: Astereae), Emphasizing the New World Species”, Phytologia, 77(3):277 (1994 publ. 1995). The following summary of the article in Phytologia by Nesom explains the basis for the name change. The genus Aster is now restricted to the Northern Hemisphere of the Old World, except for several in Africa and Aster alpinus L., which occurs in Asia and North America (Colorado). The change in the genus name reflects new data on chromosome numbers and is also based on morphological characteristics. For the genus Symphyotrichum the chromosome number is x=8. The morphological characteristics shared by the genus are based on the lack of glands, production of stem hairs in lines, and the achene and phyllary morphology. So as it turns out “Aster is no more in California” says Margariet Wetherwax, Jepson Herbarium, University of California at Berkeley. If you would like more information about these name changes visit the Jepson Online Interchange at http://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/interchange.html. Put the plant name in the “search by Latin name”; click submit name; click on the name; click on IPIN Nomenclatural and bibliographic information from the International Plant Names Index; again click on the name. |
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