A basil by any other name...
14 October 2010
More than 600,000 flowering plants are known by more than one name, with some going under three or more pseudonyms, according to the most comprehensive assessment yet of plant species. The discovery reduces the known number of flowering plant species from an estimated one million to about 400,000.
Scientists from the Missouri Botanical Garden in the US merged their database of plant names with the World Checklist of Selected Plant Families, held at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, before cross-referencing with regional floras. They found the majority of plants had duplicate entries.
Lemon-scented basil, for example, listed in the RHS Plantfinder as Ocimum x citriodorum, was first described in 1790 as Ocimum africanum. Over the next 50 years separate botanists gave it two new names, O. pilosum and O. citriodorum; the same plant is also found as O. basilicum var citriodorum and O. americanum var. pilosum. Subsequent DNA work carried out at Kew has revealed the plant to be a separate species from both O. americanum and O. basilicum – and the latest, botanically accurate name is now O. x africanum Lour.
The duplicate names will not be deleted from the record; instead, the database will show botanists where to find alternative descriptions, allowing them for the first time to gather all available information on a particular species. It's thought the database will be available online by the end of the year.