An Introduction to the Botanical Type Specimen Register

32
the Catalog itself was produced and have identical
data wherever content overlaps.
The purpose of the “Author Index” is to point
to all taxa in the Catalog described by a particular
author or combination of authors, and, therefore,
the Index is alphabetized primarily by author and
secondarily by specific epithet. Combinations of
authors are alphabetized as combinations, not as
individual authors, owing to present system lim-
itations, A person interested in a particular taxon
described by a particular author or author combina-
tion can learn quickly from the Index whether
there is an entry in the Catalog for this taxon and
then go to it. Persons wishing to study an author’s
descriptions chronologically, by year of publication,
would want to have this Index resequenced with the
date rather than the epithet being the secondary
sort-key.
The primary sort-key of the “Publication-Date
Index” is the year of publication, from the oldest
to the youngest, the actual range being from 1803
to 1971. Within each year the secondary sort-key
is the specific epithet, which references an entry in
the Catalog. This Index should be useful to those
who are interested in nomenclatural priority in the
genus or in tracing the historical development of
knowledge about Cnrex. By itself, the Index, which
includes the name of the author or author combi-
nation, is a chronological summary of the botanists
who have described species in the genus as regis-
tered in the Catalog.
The “Collector Index” is in effect a list by col-
lector of collections cited in the Catalog and
provides a convenient means of checking any her-
barium for type material of taxa recorded thus far
in the Carex file of the Type Register. Under the
name of each collector or combination of collectors
are listed the numbers and dates of all collections
in the Catalog, cross-referenced by the specific epi-
thets. The name is the primary sort-key, and the
specific epithet is the secondary sort-key. A varia-
tion of this Index would include a list of all her-
baria in which the collector’s type specimens are
deposited. In other words, the kind of guide to
the location of types that A. S. Hitchcock and his
colleagues were trying to compile directly in the
1930s (see “Introduction”) can be produced as a
by-product of the Type Register data base. Some
interesting observations can be made by compar-
SMITHSONIAN CONTRIBUTIOXS TO BOTANY
ing the “Collector Index” with the “Author In-
dex.” It becomes clear at once, for example, that
while some authors collected almost as many new
taxa as they described, others described many more
than they collected. Further examination indicates
that this difference may reflect the difference be-
tween a floristic taxonomist like M. L. Fernald, who
tended to describe his own species, and a mono-
graphic worker like K. K. Mackenzie, who described
taxa from among specimens of many collectors
amassed for a study of the genus.
The “Geographic Index” provides access to the
collections of the Catalog primarily by country of
origin and secondarily by state, province, or equiva-
lent. The specific epithet, which is the cross-
reference to the Catalog, is the tertiary sort-key. The
value of this Index will be obvious at once to
floristic workers who wish to know which taxa in
their region are typified by specimens collected
within the region, e.g., within the State of Cali-
fornia.
The “Herbarium Index,” alphabetized in the
first instance by institution, lists alphabetically by
specific and infraspecific epithets under each of the
ten institutions the taxa in the Catalog for which
they hold type specimens. The herbarium sheet
number, if there is one, and the kind of type are
listed also. The sheet number is the tertiary sort-
key. Many of the type designations have not been
validated, and the problems of validating kind of
type have been discussed at length earlier in this
paper (pp. 8 and 19-21). For this reason many
of the type specimens registered still carry the origi-
nal designation of the herbarium submitting the
data.
The following informal or archaic terms, which
appear in the Catalag and in the “Herbarium In-
dex” but which are not sanctioned by the ZCBAI,
require brief definition of their meaning or ap-
parent meaning in the Catalog. It should be
pointed out, however, that the presence of a cor-
rect term (e.g., holotype, isotype) is no guarantee
that it has been used correctly. A large number of
the designations have been validated, and where
the terminology seems to be used consistently
within a collection, e.g., where one holotype and
one or more isotypes are indicated, it can be as-
sumed that the designations were validated.