THE ESSENCE OF NAMING CULTIVARS

It seems awkward that special attention has to be paid to the naming of a cultivar, yet few people realise the importance of this process. A great number of new cultivars are named by people with little taxonomic experience, which implies that they do not have knowledge of the rules on the formation of names and the proper publication thereof Naming of plants dates back to the early centuries when man already realised that economic important plants have to be identified with one or two words. The increase in trade in plants across borders made it necessary to have rules according to which plants are named in order to avoid duplication and chaos. This eventually led to the acceptance of the International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (in short the Cultivated Plant Code). In this paper the main rules are summarised which allow the originator of a new cultivar to check if the name is acceptable. Following this the cultivar name should be registered at the International Registration Authority for Proteaceae.

V International Protea Research Symposium

J. Sadie

cultivated plant code, cultivar names, Proteaceae

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2001.545.3