17. Citation of Chinese specimens

17.1 Citations of Chinese specimens examined must be concise. Geographic names are arranged in the order of decreasing political magnitude. Representative specimens are first listed alphabetically by provincial names in capital letters preceded by a hyphen mark and followed by a colon mark. This will be followed by the names of regional district or city and ended with county's name (Xian) as the smallest unit within a respective province. The terms "province" and "city" need not be cited after the provincial and city's names. The term "county" should be abbreviated as "Co." after the county's names. Names of small town, village or commune should not be listed under their respective county unless a taxon is highly restricted to a locality and a detailed account on distribution is desirable. Under such a case, a more exact information of the locality can be mentioned (e.g., -HUBEI: Donda, Lichuan Co., Red Star Commune).

17.2 Each specimen citation should be in the following strict order: province (autonomous city), county, collector's family name (or with abbreviated given names preceded by family names to specify Chinese collectors), collection number (or the date of collection if no number; use "s.n." symbol, if no number and no year is available), and ended with the herbarium acronyms.

17.3 For any species, there should be only one specimen cited from each county or from each of the geographical locality listed, such as a mountain and a nature reserve. When dealing with a widely distributed species in China, specimens from two counties may be cited within a province. Ideally, the specimens cited will be selected from the counties with distance, e.g., one is located in the most northern part and the other in the most southern part of the province; or one is located in the most eastern part and the other in the most western part of the province.