I think the difficulty for automated case manipulation in common names is more about how to sense the proper nouns in the cases for botany.
When I went looking for the site guidelines on common names (the section I copied in above) I initially went to the “add a name” page, thinking I had seen it in there. Given it does have a sizeable spiel about adding names, I am surprised it makes no mention of capitalisation:
Guidelines
- Try to add names that have been used elsewhere. Please don’t invent new names.
- Don’t add duplicate names, e.g. don’t name numerous hawks “hawk”
- For higher level taxa, try to use names that include all descendants, like “herons and allies” or “heath family”
- Don’t add information that is not the name, e.g. paranthetical information about how you think the name should be used
- New lexicons should be in English. Please don’t add translated language names like “French, Français” because that will just make it hard or impossible for us to show localized names for people who use the site in different languages.
- Common names associated with translated languages will appear as the default common name for that language (barring the effect of place preferences, name ordering, etc.). Learn more about translation