Finding citations of original species descriptions

[sedgequeen]

For plants, to find out who the author is, I use USDA Plants (if the plant is in U.S. or Canada) or IPNI or Plants of the World On-line (POWO, a.k.a. Kew index) or a regional authority like the Jepson Manual or Oregon Flora Project. These all choose one plant name as correct among the various synonyms. Are they right? Often yes, but sometimes there is legitimate disagreement.

To find the original description, I usually check W3Tropicos, which always cites the description and often links to it. Tropicos makes it clear which names are invalid and which of a set of names based on the same description (& type specimen) is best (by their standards), but it does not choose among names based on different descriptions / type specimens. IPNI and POWO do.

Links:
USDA Plants – https://plants.sc.egov.usda.gov/home/
IPNI – https://beta.ipni.org/
Jepson Interchange – https://ucjeps.berkeley.edu/interchange/
Oregon Flora Project – https://oregonflora.org/
W3Tropicos – https://www.tropicos.org/
POWO – https://powo.science.kew.org/

[aspidoscelis]

@trscavo

For plants, ipni.org is a good source of information. Links to the original source material are often provided as well.

Seconded. Try Tropicos, as well. Occasionally one has information the other does not.

[aspidoscelis]

I’ve been matching USDA PLANTS records to IPNI and Tropicos. Good times. It would be a lot easier if USDA PLANTS used the standard forms of author names!

[jnstuart]

Some years ago I made an effort to record the type localities and original description citations for Southwestern US mammal species. Not nearly as many species as plants, and lots of literature on them, but it was (surprisingly) a difficult exercise tracking down that information.