Skip to main content
Log in

Networked names: synonyms in eighteenth-century botany

  • Original Paper
  • Published:
History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences Aims and scope Submit manuscript

Abstract

This paper addresses early modern botanical nomenclature, the practices of identifying and publishing synonyms in particular, as a collaborative “information science”. Before Linnaean nomenclature became the lingua franca of botany, it was inevitable that, over time, the same plant was given several names by different people, which created confusion and made communication among botanists increasingly difficult. What names counted as synonyms and actually referred to the same plant had to be identified by meticulously comparing living and dried specimens of this and similar plants as well as relevant illustrations und descriptions in the botanical literature. Identifying synonyms required and generated an ever-expanding mass of data, which was used continuously to adjust and rearrange plant names. Despite the greatest care, judgements on synonyms were not definitive, which meant that published lists of synonyms for individual species of plants were in a state of flux and had to be constantly updated, corrected, and rewritten. This required long-term international collaborations, the accumulated results of which were not published once but consecutively, in augmented and corrected editions of a book. As a result of this networked approach, synonyms are networked names that reflect the epistemic interconnectedness of the botanical community. These questions will be discussed with a focus on the Dutch botanist Johannes Burman (1706–1779), who placed synonyms at the centre of his work as posthumous editor—and co-author—of the botanical manuscripts that were left behind by other botanists.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Fig. 1
Fig. 2

Similar content being viewed by others

Notes

  1. On Linnaeus’s taxonomic procedures and his nomenclature see Sara T. Scharf: Identification Keys, the “Natural Method”, and the Development of Plant Identification Manuals, in: Journal for the History of Biology 42 (2009), 73–117; Staffan Müller-Wille: Collection and Collation. Theory and Practice of Linnaean Botany, in: Studies in History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences 38 (2007), 541–562; id.: Botanik und weltweiter Handel. Zur Begründung eines natürlichen Systems der Pflanzen durch Carl von Linné (1707–78), Berlin 1999; William T. Stearn: An Introduction to the Species Plantarum and Cognate Botanical Works of Carl Linnaeus, in: Species Plantarum. A Facsimile of the First Edition (1753), London 1957, 1–176.

  2. See Charles Jarvis: Order out of Chaos. Linnaean Plant Names and their Types, London 2007; Mario Beretta and Alessandro Tosi (eds.): Linnaeus in Italy. The Spread of a Revolution in Science, Sagamore Beach, MA, 2007; Frans A. Stafleu: Linnaeus and the Linnaeans. The Spreading of their Ideas in Systematic Botany, 1735–1789, Utrecht 1971. The most prominent critics and deniers of Linnaean nomenclature included the Swiss botanist Albrecht von Haller and the French natural historians Bernard de Jussieu, Georges-Louis Leclerc, comte de Buffon and Michel Adanson. See also Stéphane van Damme: In the Name of Linnaeus. Paris as a Disputed Capital of Natural Knowledge (1730–1783), in: id./Hanna Hodacs/Kenneth Nyberg (eds.): Linnaeus, Natural History, and the Circulation of Knowledge, Oxford 2018, 113–135; Pascal Duris: Linné et la France (1780–1850), Geneva 1993; Phillip R. Sloan: The Buffon-Linnaeus Controversy, in: Isis 67 (1976), 356–375; on collaboration in eighteenth-century botany see Bettina Dietz: What is a Botanical Author? Pehr Osbeck’s Travelogue and the Culture of Collaborative Publishing in Linnaean Botany, in: Stéphane van Damme/Hanna Hodacs/Kenneth Nyberg (eds.): Linnaeus, Natural History, and the Circulation of Knowledge, Oxford 2018, 57–79; ead.: Das System der Natur. Die kollaborative Wissenskultur der Botanik im 18. Jahrhundert, Cologne/Weimar/Vienna 2017; ead.: Linnaeus’ Restless System. Translation as Textual Engineering in Eighteenth-Century Natural History, in: Annals of Science 73/2 (2016), 143–156; ead.: Contribution and Co-production. The Collaborative Culture of Linnaean Botany, in: Annals of Science 69 (2012), 551–569.

  3. Basilius Besler: Hortus Eystettensis, s.l. 1613, fol. 2 (unpag.).

  4. From a philosophy of science perspective see Joeri Witteveen: Suppressing Synonymy with a Homonym. The Emergence of the Nomenclatural Type Concept in Nineteenth Century Natural History, in: Journal of the History of Biology 49 (2016), 135–189.

  5. A selection: James Delbourgo: Collecting the World. Hans Sloane and the Origins of the British Museum, Cambridge (MA) 2017; Jim Endersby: Imperial Nature: Joseph Hooker and the Practices of Victorian Science, Chicago 2008; Regina Dauser/Stefan Hächler et al. (eds.): Wissen im Netz. Botanik und Pflanzentransfer in europäischen Netzwerken des 18. Jahrhunderts, Berlin 2008; Harold J. Cook: Matters of Exchange. Commerce, Medicine, and Science in the Dutch Golden Age, New Haven 2007; Emma C. Spary: Utopia’s Garden. French Natural History from Old Regime to Revolution, Chicago 2000; Marie-Noëlle Bourguet: La collecte du monde. Voyage et histoire naturelle, fin XVIIe siècle–début XIXe siècle, in: Claude Blanckaert/Claudine Cohen (eds.): Le Muséum au premier siècle de son histoire, Paris 1997, 163–196; Paula Findlen: Possessing Nature. Museums, Collecting, and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy, Berkeley 1994.

  6. Cf. Anke te Heesen: The Notebook. A Paper-Technology, in: Bruno Latour/Peter Weibel (eds.): Making Things Public. Atmospheres of Democracy, Cambridge (MA)/London 2005, 582–589; see also: Volker Hess/J. Andrew Mendelsohn: Case and Series. Medical Knowledge and Paper Technology, 1600–1900, in: History of Science, 48 (2010), 287–314; Renée Raphael: Reading Galileo. Scribal Technologies and the two Sciences, Baltimore 2017; Elizabeth Yale: Sociable Knowledge. Natural History and the Nation in Early Modern Britain, Philadelphia 2016.

  7. See e.g.: Richard Yeo: Notebooks, English Virtuosi, and Early Modern Science, Chicago 2014; Ann Blair/Richard Yeo (eds.): Note-Taking in Early Modern Europe (special issue), Intellectual History Review 20/3 (2010); Te Heesen, Notebook.

  8. See Staffan Müller-Wille/Isabelle Charmantier (eds.): Worlds of Paper (special issue), Early Science and Medicine 19/5 (2014); Anke te Heesen: Accounting for the Natural World. Double-Entry Bookkeeping in the Field, in: Londa Schiebinger/Claudia Swan (Hg.): Colonial Botany. Science, Commerce, and Politics in the Early Modern World, Philadelphia 2005, 237–251; Ann Blair: Reading Strategies for Coping with Information Overload, c.1550–1700, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003), 11–28; Martin Krajewski: Zettelwirtschaft. Die Geburt der Kartei aus dem Geist der Bibliothek, Berlin 2002.

  9. See e.g. Raphael, Reading Galileo; K. Böhme/Staffan Müller-Wille: “In der Jungfernheide hinterm Pulvermagazin frequens”. Karl Ludwig Willdenow’s Annotated Copy of Florae Berolinensis Prodromus (1787), in: NTM International Journal of History and Ethics of Natural Sciences, Technology and Medicine, 21(2013), 93–106.

  10. On natural history illustrations see Florike Egmond: Eye for Detail. Images of Plants and Animals in Art and Science, 1500–1630, London 2016; Sachiko Kusukawa: Picturing the Book of Nature. Image, Text and Argument in Sixteenth-Century Human Anatomy and Medical Botany, Chicago 2012; ead.: Patron’s Review »The Role of Images in the Development of Renaissance Natural History«, in: Archives of Natural History 38 (2011), 189–213; Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison: Objectivity, New York 2007 (chapter 2 “Truth to Nature”); Kärin Nickelsen: Draughtsmen, Botanists, and Nature. The Construction of Eighteenth-Century Botanical Illustrations, Dordrecht 2006; see also the methodologically pioneering approach taken by Horst Bredekamp: Galileis denkende Hand. Form und Forschung um 1600, Berlin 2015.

  11. With respect to botany see Dietz, System der Natur; ead., Contribution and Co-production; Staffan Müller-Wille: Names and Numbers. “Data” in Classical Natural History, in: Osiris 32 (2017), 109–128; id./Isabelle Charmantier: Natural History and Information Overload. The Case of Linnaeus, in: Studies in History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (2012), 4–15; Daniel Rosenberg: Early Modern Information Overload, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003), 1–9; Brian Ogilvie: The Many Books of Nature. Renaissance Naturalists and Information Overload, in: Journal of the History of Ideas 64 (2003), 29–40; on data science see e.g. Bruno Strasser: Data-Driven Sciences: From Wonder Cabinets to Electronic Databases, in: Studies in History and Philosophy of the Biological and Biomedical Sciences 43 (2012), 85–87; id.: The Experimenter’s Museum. GenBank, Natural History, and the Moral Economies of Biomedicine, in: Isis 102 (2011), 60–96.

  12. See above FN2.

  13. On the question of what represented a mistake or an error for eighteenth-century botanists, and how to correct them, see below.

  14. See Antoine Lasègue: Musée botanique de M. Benjamin Delessert. Notices sur les collections de plantes et la bibliothèque qui le composent; contenant en outre des documents sur les principaux herbiers d’Europe, Paris 1845, 21, 66.

  15. Linnaeus emphasized in his Philosophia botanica that for this reason the identification of synonyms continued to be indispensable despite the growing acceptance of his own nomenclature and taxonomy. See Carl Linnaeus: Philosophia botanica (Stockholm 1751), trans. Stephen Freer, Oxford 2003, 269.

  16. See Brian Ogilvie: The Science of Describing. Natural History in Renaissance Europe, Chicago 2006.

  17. “We completely stopped understanding each other”, according to the French botanist Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck (1744–1829), writing in a dictionary entry on synonyms and the problems associated with them. Cf. Art. “Concordance ou Synonymie”, in: Dictionnaire encyclopédique méthodique. Botanique, vol. 2, Paris 1790, 75.

  18. On this cf. Scharf, Identification Keys.

  19. Caspar Bauhin: Pinax theatri botanici […] sive index in Theophrasti, Dioscoridis, Plinii et botanicorum qui a seculo scripserunt opera; plantarum circiter sex millium ab ipsis exhibitarum nomina cum earundem synonymiis & differentiis methodice secundum earum & genera & species proponens […], Basel 1623.

  20. See Philippe Selosse: The underlying pattern of the Renaissance botanical genre Pinax, in: Janne Skaffari/Matti Peikola et al. (eds.), Opening Windows on Texts and Discourses of the Past, Philadelphia 2005, 161–178, 168.

  21. See Linnaeus, Species plantarum, “Lectori” (unpaginated Foreword). Over the years, Linnaeus had added about 3000 handwritten entries to his personal copy of Bauhin’s Pinax. On this see S. Savage, Studies in Linnaean Synonymy. 1. Caspar Bauhin’s Pinax and Burser’s Herbarium, in: Proceedings of the Linnaean Society London 148 (1935), 16–26, 18f.

  22. On this see George Pasti, Jr.: Consul Sherard. Amateur Botanist and Patron of Learning, 1659–1728, unpublished Ph.D. thesis, University of Illinois, Urbana, 1950, 190–206; Dietz, System der Natur, 50–52.

  23. William Sherard to Richard Richardson, 12 May 1722, in: Extracts from the Literary and Scientific Correspondence of Richard Richardson, M. D., F. R. S., ed. by Dawson Turner, Yarmouth 1835, 179–183, 180.

  24. Quoted from George Claridge Druce: The Dillenian Herbaria. An Account of the Dillenian Collections in the Herbarium of the University of Oxford, Oxford 1907, XXII (which does not identify the letter from which the quotation is taken).

  25. Cf. Druce, Dillenia Herbaria, XXVI.

  26. In the Species Plantarum Linnaeus mentioned that Humphry Sibthorpe, Dillenius’s successor as Sherardian Professor of Botany at the University of Oxford, was working to complete the Pinax. But Sibthorpe was not able to finish the project either. Cf. Linnaeus, Species plantarum, 269.

  27. Linnaeus to Johann Georg Gmelin (15 Apr. 1744); Wilhelm Plieninger: Joannis Georgii Gmelini Reliquias quae supersunt commercii epistolici cum Carolo Linnaeo, Alberto Hallero, Guilelmo Stellero et al., Stuttgart 1861, 18–22, 19; facsimile of the Latin original http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letter/L0551 (19.6.2018).

  28. Johann Georg Gmelin to Linnaeus (16 Apr. 1745); facsimile of the Latin original http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letter/L0622, 1–8, 1.

  29. Ibid., 1.

  30. Linnaeus to Gmelin (5 May 1745); Plieninger, Gmelini Reliquias, 43–47; facsimile of the original http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letter/L5917, 1–4. The species about which Linnaeus was corresponding with Gmelin is (in today’s nomenclature) Phleum phleoides. While older authors such as Bauhin and Scheuchzer assigned most grasses to the genus Gramen, Linnaeus created the genuses Arundo, Phleum, Phalaris among others with specific characteristics. Thanks to Luc Lienhard (Berne) for clarifying this.

  31. Johann Georg Gmelin to Linnaeus (28 May 1745); facsimile of the Latin original http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letter/L0625, 1–3, 1.

  32. Cf. ibid.

  33. Cf. Gmelin, Flora Sibirica, vol. 1, 87. Gmelin also corresponded with Albrecht von Haller about the classification of his Siberian grasses. I owe this reference to Luc Lienhard.

  34. Van Royen’s Alopecurus culmo erecto is one of the synonyms that Gmelin listed in his letter to Linnaeus 16 Apr. 1745. See above.

  35. See Linnaeus, Species plantarum (1753), 55; Species plantarum, 2nd edn. (1762), 87f.

  36. In 1810 Burman’s herbarium had been bought by the Frenchman Benjamin Delessert (1773–1847) who filed Burman’s collections in his own herbarium, except three bound herbaria from India, the Cape, and Ceylon. While Delessert’s herbarium had been presented to the City of Geneva by his daughters in 1869, the bound Ceylon herbarium ended up in the library of the Institut de France in Paris. On the trajectory of Burman’s and Delessert’s herbaria see Georges W. Staples and Fernand Jacquemoud: Typification and Nomenclature of the Convolvulaceae in N. L. Burman’s Flora Indica, with an Introduction to the Burman Collection at Geneva, in: Candollea 60 (2005), 445–467, 446–447; Onno D. Wijnands: Burman’s Prodromus Florae Capensis, in: Botanical Journal of the Linnaean Society 109 (1992), 485–502; Lasègue, Musée, 66.

  37. Here and in the following see Foreword to Burman, Thesaurus Zeylanicus, Praefatio, unpag.

  38. Collectio plantarum Ceylanensium, quas olim peritissimus Botanicus Paulus Hermannus in ipsa Ceylona observavit atque collegit […] vero ad has plurasque alias Thesaurum meum Zeylanicum conscripsi […] anno MDCCXXXVII, Johannes Burmannus (Hermann’s annotated herbarium), Library of the Institut de France, Paris, MS 3912, p. 1. My request for a reproduction of this page was turned down by the library due to the fragility of the manuscript.

  39. Burman, Thesaurus Zeylanicus, 24f. Here and in the following I have added the full versions of the abbreviated titles and the author’s name in square brackets.

  40. Ibid., 27.

  41. On this see Burman, Thesaurus Zeylanicus, Praefatio, unpag.

  42. Herbarium amboinense, plurimas complectens arbores, frutices, herbas, plantas terrestres & aquaticas, quae in Amboina, et adjacentibus reperiuntur insulis, accuratissime descriptas juxta earum formas, cum diversis denominationibus, cultura, usu, ac virtutibus, […], omnia magno labore ac studio multos per annos conlegit, & duodecim libris Belgice conscripsit Georg Everhard Rumphius […], nunc primum in lucem edidit, & in Latinum sermonem vertit Joannes Burmannus […] qui varia adjecit synonyma, suasque observationes, 6 vols., Amsterdam 1741–50. An English translation has been published as The Ambonese Herbal, trans. E. M. Beekman, New Haven 2011.

  43. On Garcin and his collecting activities in India, Ceylon and the islands of present-day Indonesia see Alexandra Cook: Laurent Garcin, M.D. F.R.S.: A Forgotten Source for N. L. Burman’s Flora Indica (1768), in: Harvard Papers in Botany 21 (2016), 31–53. On the co-operation of Linnaeus and Adriaan van Royen in the publication of the Herbarium Amboinense see Charles Jarvis: Order out of Chaos. Linnaean Plant Names and their Types, London 2007; Alicia Lourteig: L’herbier de Paul Hermann, base du Thesaurus Zeylanicus de Johan Burman, in: Taxon 15 (1966), 23–32.

  44. Herbarium Amboinense, 139 (bold print added).

  45. See Johan Andreas Murray to Linnaeus (7 Dec. 1765); English summary of the Swedish original http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letter/3687; facsimile of the original, ibid.

  46. John Hill: The vegetable system […], 26 vols., London 1759–1775.

  47. On the widely branching exchange system that established itself as an alternative to the dysfunctional market for scientific books, see Dietz, System der Natur, 117–137.

  48. See Marie-Noëlle Bourguet: La collecte du monde. Voyage et histoire naturelle, fin XVIIe siècle—début XIXe siècle, in: Claude Blanckaert/Claudine Cohen (eds.): Le Muséum au premier siècle de son histoire, Paris 1997, 163–196.

  49. See Jacquin to Linnaeus (24 Nov. 1770); facsimile of the Latin original http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letter/L4430, 1–2, 2.

  50. See Linnaeus to N. L. Burman (14 July 1768); the full text of the Latin original and an English summary http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letter/L4096.

  51. Plantarum Americanarum fasciculi, continens plantas, quas olim Carolus Plumierius […] detexit, eruitque, atque in insulis Antillis ipse depinxit; has primum in lucem edidit, concinnis descriptionibus, & observationibus, aeneisque tabulis illustravit Joannes Burmannus, Amsterdam/Leiden 1755–60.

  52. For details of Plumier’s papers see Ignaz Urban: Plumiers Leben und Schriften nebst einem Schlüssel zu seinen Blütenpflanzen, in: Repertorium specierum novarum regni vegetabilis, supplements, vol. 5 (1920), 1–181, 26f.

  53. The two folio volumes are today held by the library of the University of Groningen (HS 98a: Westindische Planten). The first is entitled “Plantae, quas Carolus Plumierius reperit et sua depinxit manu in America, in insulis Antillis dictis. Disposuit in his libris Hermannus Boerhaave 1733”; the second “Icones plantarum Americanarum quas in insulis Antillis propria manu depinxit Carolus Plumierus, jussu et sumptibus Ludovici XIV, ut in bibliotheca regia Parisiana habentur. Digessit Boerhaave in hoc volumen secundum 1733”.

  54. The copies of Plumier’s drawings that Boerhaave had commissioned, bound in two folio volumes, are known as the Codex Boerhaavianus.

  55. See Burman, Plantarum Americanarum fasciculus quartus (1756), 83. On the question of why the illustrations in Burman’s edition do not match up to the quality of Plumier’s originals, see Urban, Plumiers Leben, 28–30.

  56. Albrecht von Haller to Linnaeus (17 Oct. 1746), in: James Edward Smith (ed.): A selection of the correspondence of Linnaeus and other naturalists, from the original manuscripts, 2 vols., London 1821, vol. 2, 399–405, 400; facsimile of the original http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letter/L0740, 1–3.

  57. See Burman, Plantarum Americanarum fasciculus quintus (1757), 91.

  58. See Burman, Plantarum Americanarum fasciculus quartus, 72; Hans Sloane: A voyage to the islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica, with the natural history of the herbs and trees, four-footed beasts, fishes, birds, insects, reptiles, &c. of the last of those islands; […] Illustrated with figures of the things described, which have not been heretofore engraved. In large copper-plates as big as the life, 2 vols., London 1707; Rerum medicarum Novae Hispaniae thesaurus seu plantarum animalium mineralium Mexicanorum historia ex Francisci Hernandez novi orbis medici primarii relationibus in ipsa Mexicana urbe conscriptis a Nardo Antonio Reccho […] jussu Philippi II. Hisp. Ind. etc. Regis collecta ac in ordinem digesta a Ioanne Terrentio Lynceo […] notis illustrata […], Rome 1651.

  59. Cf. Johannes Burman to Linnaeus (15 May 1755), full text of the original http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letter/L1910.

  60. Cf. Johannes Burman to Linnaeus (12 July 1755), full text and facsimile of the original http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letter/L1931, 1–3.

  61. Cf. Johannes Burman to Linnaeus (30 Sept. 1755), full text and facsimile of the original http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letter/L1942, 1–3.

  62. See e.g. Burman, Plantarum Americanarum fasciculus primus, 7 (observatio on tabula duodecima).

  63. See Urban, Plumiers Leben, 30–33.

  64. John Ray to Hans Sloane (undated), in: Edwin Lankester (ed.): The correspondence of John Ray, consisting of selections from the philosophical letters published by Derham, and original letters of John Ray in the collection of the British Museum, London 1848, 468–471, 468. The Supplementum was published as the third volume of Ray’s Historia plantarum: Joannis Raii […] Historiae plantarum […] tomus tertius: qui est supplementum duorum praecedentium: species omnes vel omissas, vel post volumina illa evulgata editas, praeter innumeras fere novas & indictas ab amicis communicatas complectens; cum synonymis necessariis et usibus […], London 1704.

  65. Ray to Sloane, 27 Apr. 1698, in: Lankester, Correspondence, 339.

  66. Linné to Jacquin (1 Apr. 1764), in: Caroli Linnaei epistolae ad N. J. Jacquin, 74–76, 74 (author’s translation of the Latin original); facsimile of the original http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letter/L3397 (19.6.2018).

  67. On this see Dietz, Contribution, 563–569; ead.: System der Natur.

  68. Linné to Bernard de Jussieu (5 Feb. 1740), full text and facsimile of the original http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letter/L0374, 1–4, 3.

  69. Albrecht von Haller to Linné (25 Aug. 1740), full text and facsimile of the original http://linnaeus.c18.net/Letter/L0395, 1–3, 2.

  70. Nikolaus Joseph Freiherr von Jacquin: Enumeratio systematica plantarum, quas in insulis Caribaeis vicinaque Americes continente detexit novas, aut jam cognitas emendavit, Leiden 1760; id.: Selectarum stirpium Americanarum historia, in qua ad Linnaeanum systema determinatae descriptaeque sistuntur plantae illae, quas in insulis Martinica, Jamaica, Domingo, aliisque, et in vicinae continentis parte, observavit rariores; adjectis iconibus in solo natali delineatis, Vienna 1763.

  71. Sloane and Browne had published works on Caribbean flora. Hans Sloane: A voyage to the islands Madera, Barbados, Nieves, S. Christophers and Jamaica […], 2 vols., London 1707–1725; Patrick Browne: The civil and natural history of Jamaica, London 1756.

  72. Jean-Baptiste de Lamarck: Encyclopédie Méthodique […]. Botanique, 4 vols., Paris etc. 1783–1797.

  73. “Herr Burman wird den holländischen Text ins Lateinische übersetzen und allerley gute, theils eigene theils anderer Autoren Anmerkungen dazuthun.” Neue Zeitungen für Gelehrte Sachen 23 (1737), 275–277, 276; see also the review of the Herbarium Amboinense in the same journal, which also stresses Burman’s additions (Neue Zeitungen für Gelehrte Sachen 30 (1744), 4–5, 5.

  74. Ernst Gottlieb Steudel: Nomenclator botanicus; enumerans ordine alphabetico nomina atque synonyma tum generica tum specifica et a Linnaeo et recentioribus de re botanica scriptoribus […] imposita, 2 vols., Stuttgart/Tübingen 1821–1824; 2. edn., 1840–1841. Charles Darwin used Steudel’s Nomenclator as a model when, in the 1880s, he commissioned an index of the flowering plants from Joseph Dalton Hooker (the later Index Kewensis).

  75. See Steudel, Nomenclator, vol. 1 (1821), Praefatio, IV.

Acknowledgements

Funding was provided by the Research Grants Council (RGC), University Grants Committee of the Hong Kong S.A.R. (Grant No. 12601819).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Bettina Dietz.

Additional information

Publisher's Note

Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

Cite this article

Dietz, B. Networked names: synonyms in eighteenth-century botany. HPLS 41, 46 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-019-0286-6

Download citation

  • Received:

  • Accepted:

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40656-019-0286-6

Keywords

Navigation