NOMENCLATURE OF CULTIVATED PLANTS: A HISTORICAL BOTANICAL STANDPOINT

Prior to publication of the first edition of the International Code of Nomenclature of Cultivated Plants (ICNCP) some 50 years ago, the only rules governing the naming of cultivated plants were those that also dealt with plants in the wild, the forerunners of the present International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN). Even today, the Preamble to the ICBN states that its “rules and recommendations apply to all organisms traditionally treated as plants”, but also goes on to say that the ICNCP “deals with the use and formation of names for special plant categories in agricultural, forestry, and horticultural nomenclature.” The need for the ICNCP and the way in which the two Codes interact are addressed. The progressive independence of plant nomenclature from taxonomy, the theory and practice of classification, is outlined from Linnaeus’s development of the binomial to the adoption of the type method. In general, the ICBN makes no assumptions as to the methods, principles or purposes of taxonomy, save one, that the units of taxonomy, the taxa being named, are in some way nested in a hierarchy of ranks. Variation at and below the species level, whether in wild or cultivated plants, is not readily accommodated in a hierarchical structure. On the other hand, the need to communicate and hence name the enormous diversity of cultivated plants at such levels is manifest. The ICNCP provides the rules by which this can be achieved. Cultivated plants fall under the provisions of the ICBN in so far, but only in so far, as they fall within the general system of classification of plants; beyond that the provisions of the ICNCP, which do not require an extensive and obligatory hierarchy of entities, and do not presume that desirable groupings are necessarily non-overlapping, apply.