1. Plant names: obstacles and solutions
to accessing information about plants
Bob Allkin, Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, UK

2. Talk structure What is a scientific plant name?
Names as obstacles to accessing data
Examples of impact
Resources / standards available
New integrating initiatives
Moving forward – what are your needs?

3. What is a scientific name?
Genus name (in Latin)
Species name (in Latin)
Author e.g. “Hocus pocus Bob”
Publication must follow: International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN)
include a diagnostic description of plant (in latin)
cites “type” specimen(s) - fixes identity of name for eternity
respect priority of existing names
Beware: the Code evolves!
established 1753; revised every 6 yrs: Tokyo 1996; St Louis 2000; Vienna 2006

4. Q1: How many plants are there?
New plants being discovered (4 to 6K scientific names published / yr)
No authoritative central reference
c million flowering plants (one botanists educated guess)
Q2: How many names are there?
> 1.5 million scientific plant names published
> 4 million “names” incl. common misspellings
i.e. lots more names than plants!

5. Structural Obstacles Most plants have many names (synonyms)
The same binomial may be published by different authors (“Hocus pocus Bob” & “Hocus pocus John”) who refer to different plants (homonyms)
Names used in literature often refer to wrong plant (misapplied names)
i.e. One plant may have many names
& One name may refer to many plants

6. Avoidable Obstacles:
Plant name authors are abbreviated in different ways – there IS a standard
“Noise” increases as names are copied
New errors introduced
Existing errors replicated
Information published about a plant cannot be verified unless specimen(s) are cited

7. So what does it look like?.... Google it!
Saussurea costus (Falc.) Lips. has a root widely used in medicine – imported to EU
So what does it look like?.... Google it!

8. Searching with Accepted name
51 PubMed Records
215
GenBank Records

9. Searching with a synonym
03 PubMed Records 14
GenBank Records

10. Conclusions
Do not expect to find all information that is published using just one name
across the internet or
within a single information source
You will have to work hard to find all synonyms of a given plant

11. Examples of impact
EU Health authority publish legislation (re herbal & poisonous plants) Several either meaningless (non existent names) or ambiguous (homonyms)
US & Japanese health authority lists: 20% plants names do not exist. 5%: plants recorded more than once – under different names.
World Bank funds multimillion $ forestry programme in NE Brazil local tree (“Ziziphus joazeiro Mart.”) has exciting potential 3 different species grown in the plots!
World Conservation Monitoring Centre (IUCN) maintain database 70% of maintenance costs relate to entering, checking and reviewing plant names and distributions.

12. Available resources / standards: 1) Nomenclators
Q1: Does name “Hocus pocus” exist?
Q2: How should it be written?
Q3: Where can I find the original publication?
Q4: Do any homonyms exist?
Q5: Who is/are the authors?
International Plant Name Index
> Kew + Harvard + Australian Botanical Inst
> 1.5 million published plant names (>96%)
> 37,000 authors
> 15,000 publications
Target audience – systematists, db compilers

14. Available resources / standards 2) Checklists
coherent authoritative global list of plants (e.g. in a family)
consensus
index to ALL relevant names
resolves synonymy
provides further information e.g. geographical distribution, uses, etc
Q1: What is the “accepted name” of this plant ?
Q2: Are names ‘x’ and ‘y’ synonymous?
Q3: How many plants are in this genus?
Q4: How many plants are in this country?
Q5: List all synonyms for this plant?
Example:
Kew’s World Checklist of Selected Plant Families – covers 150 plant families
% complete

16. Comparison of names in NCBI and Kew systems (106 families)

17. Integrated Resources 1) Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (CBD)
TARGET 1: A list of all plants by 2010 – facilitated by Kew. 60% complete Kew and Missouri work toward draft checklist + other data ( )
Catalogue of Life (Sp ITIS) ( Serves existing checklists for all organisms (plants, animals, insects etc) Much of Kew’s checklist data served. Offers alternative / conflicting views
Global Biodiversity Information Framework ( ) Serves specimen records from collections worldwide Name catalogue served from “Catalogue of Life”
Encyclopedia of Life ( Species pages – coordinating existing knowledge (video/ text/ images etc) No additional name data. Use “Catalogue of Life” as backbone

18. Moving forward: improving Kew’s plant name services
Tailored consultancies – for target groups
e.g. Medicinal Plants - WHO, EMEA, ICH
reporting on existing lists of plant names
validating, cleaning & completing name lists
building and maintaining subsets for focus groups
Designing & developing web services
automated responses to queries from other system / API
maintenance of name lists avoiding costs for users
subscription services
Seeking to develop partnerships with user groups
inform design of services / user needs
develop resource to meet specific demands

19. Thanks for your attention! Ontologies / Vocabularies / Schemas / LSIDs
Questions?
Ideas to pursue?
PS Biodiversity Information Standards Taxonomic Databases Working Group TDWG
Ontologies / Vocabularies / Schemas / LSIDs