Continuing the discussion from How should I handle a new species that POWO lists as "unplaced"?:
The flag in question is for Philodendron imbe. The creator of the flag stated as the reason, “this name is unplaced.” However, as there are seven observation, the taxon cannot simply be deactivated. Would this be a case of resolving the flag in favor of deviating from POWO, or is there another approved resolution? If the Curator Guide covers this situation, I haven’t found it.
there is no way to resolve this type of flag without having an update from in the literature – just leave it open. unplaced names require an actual nomenclatural fix to be published to catch up to the taxonomy. this is not really something that can be fixed all on iNaturalist – even if the near-term decision is to establish a deviation, it’s best to leave the flag open as there is likely still a relevant scientific debate still happening in the background offsite.
flags have no intrinsic urgency anyway, so there should be no issue with letting it sit.
You don’t resolve the flag until a new name is published for this taxon. Just leave the flag open, with no deviation.
I believe the name in question does not have nomenclatural issues.
Philodendron imbe | International Plant Names Index
It seems to me that very often the ‘unplaced’ flag in POWO means simply that the Kew curators have not got around to reviewing the status of that name and/or there is no recent revision with a reliable opinion. I expect there are tens of thousands of such names. In these cases I don’t believe that a POWO ‘unplaced’ flag is sufficient justification for the name to be automatically excluded from iNat. In those cases involving long forgotten names then they probably shouldn’t have been added in the first place. Some people don’t seem to realize that iNat is not a repository for all names that have appeared somewhere. IMO those names should be inactivated. However, there are other cases where the name is in current use, despite the absence of revision by POWO, and they should be kept. The iNat flagging of all names that are ‘unplaced’ in POWO might serve some purpose to identify names that need inactivating. Otherwise I don’t think ‘unplaced’ generally means much.
All names (unplaced or not) in POWO have been reviewed.
It is not always a nomenclatural problem.
See : https://powo.science.kew.org/about-wcvp#unplacednames
Most of the time, it is :
no correct name is available in an accepted genus
and I think this is the case with Philodendron imbe.
These names should not be deactivated : the concept is good, it’s just the name that is not the good name.
The iNat flagging of unplaced names is not intended to identify names that need to be inactivated, but to draw attention to the need of change of the name. I have seen many cases where some inatters have provided a publication that allowed a feedback to be sent to POWO and POWO un-unplaced the name (and POWO can’t see all publications).
I couldn’t disagree more with this sentiment. There’s many unresolved flags, which together makes a backlog that buries the actionable or at least discussion worthy ones amongst the recalcitrant or impossibles. For athropods i’ve been digging out many really simply ones that needlessly got ignored as they were missed amongst such morass.
I fail to see how this is intrinsic to an individual flag itself.
I should maybe clarify my sentiment to differentiate urgency from resolvability, i’m just rather frustrated by resolvable flags being lost amongst others, but understandably with many of those that are potentially actionable, then of course helpful to have discussion time, await outside changes, updates etc.
However, some of these “unplaced taxon” look to be towards the “impossible” end of the resolvability scale unless some setup changes. My reading of the POWO blurb is that it’s often covering a variety of “nomenclatural sins”. So, i also disagree with @cooperj 's statement “I believe the name in question does not have nomenclatural issues.” Some seem to be recombinations (usually through generic synonyms) that are not stated explicitly stated in their new combinations. Correct me if i’m wrong on that. For animals under ICZN that’s largely unregulated, but it seems to me botanists like to only have directly explicit recombinations.
However, i looked into this specific case now, and it seems a different issue, this one seems to be a case of ‘nomen dubium’ (where i’m also unclear how best to handle such flags made on animals). Here for this Philodendron plant, Sakuragui, Mayo & Zappi (2005) say (p, 509) “The name Philodendron imbe has been used widely for a few different species from Northeastern Brazil, Southeastern Brazil and elsewhere. As its identity remains doubtful and this name could not be typified, it is better abandoned.”
This then calls into question your statement @sbrobeson above that says “unplaced names require an actual nomenclatural fix to be published to catch up to the taxonomy.” This case may be one where there’s no ‘fix’ or ‘catch up’ to await, it’s effectively a defunct taxon name. For specifics here, it seems the herbarium with the type was destroyed, the specimen origins vague, and the description too poor to determine between multiple species from the feasible collection zone. Other case of ‘nomina dubia’ may be restored to ‘valdity’ (or whatever the right botanical terminology is for active usage) if lost types are found etc, or e.g. someone takes bold step to designed a neotype to re-establish and redefine. However, from what i read on this specific Philodendron, the former is impossible and latter does not seem a desirable option. Point being, with no resolution on the likely horizon, do we just leave a flag of ‘unplaced taxon’ as unresolved in perpetuity? I’m against that, a compromise could be some specific markup as “unplaced taxon” or better yet, specific markup like “nomen dubium” but do we then want users to be able to link observations to such ones? (and equally as the question, what to do with existing observations"identified" as such)
Else - see original flag - apparently typification happened in followup 2011 paper that i’d missed, but authors conclude “we have seen no specimen which matches it”
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