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News From MO: 2000 Linnaean Plant Name Typification Project This project, based in the Botany Department of the Natural History Museum in London (BM) and partly supported by the Linnean Society of London (LINN), is headed by Charles E. Jarvis. It is designed to provide a thorough assessment of the typification of each of the approximately 11,000 generic, specific, and varietal plant names published by Linnaeus between 1753 and 1778, and to produce an annotated catalog containing detailed notes and the citation of all relevant literature for each name. Once the catalog is published, the Linnaean project's database will be made available on the Internet. Fred Barrie [webpage] worked on the project in London for three years until 1993, and later continued to contribute from his Chicago base. The project has already published "A list of Linnaean generic names and their types" (Jarvis et al., Regnum Vegetabile 127), which includes the 1,313 validly published Linnaean generic names, the generitype (the ultimate type for each), and 450 new typifications. Nicholas Turland [webpage] was Barrie's successor on the project, from 1994 until he came to MO in 1997, and was himself succeeded by Steve Cafferty, who continues to work on the project. Turland published three papers with Jarvis and Cafferty in the journal Taxon newly typifying over 500 Linnaean names in the families Asteraceae, Fabaceae, and Poaceae, in addition to 26 proposals to conserve or reject Linnaean names. The project currently has papers typifying names in the Brassicaceae and Lamiaceae in advanced stages of preparation, and it recently digitized and placed online the John Clayton Herbarium, which contains many Linnaean types for North American taxa. The Hermann and other historic herbaria will follow in the near future. Further details are available on the Linnaean Plant Name Typification Project and Botany Department web pages at the Natural History Museum. Top | Table of Contents