Thanks Mitchel
Yes I have been using these sites for a long time for sorting out names for
some plants. Practicing taxonomy since 1970, I have gone through all: Huge
volumes of Index Kewensis and its supplements, Kew database, IPNI, GRIN,
Sorting Plant Names and all. In fact I was among the first persons to
introduce authority names in scientific names in our group. It was great
relief to see the publication of The Plant List in 2010, but unfortunately
it has more errors and omissions and unresolved names than one can cope
with. I hope with your association with our group we may see it progressing
much faster.
Yes Dinesh ji has done herculean task of compiling local names in
regional scripts. We do have a good compilation of local names (but in
Roman script) in book "Useful Plants of India" published by CSIR, but names
have to be converted into regional scripts.
--
Dr. Gurcharan Singh
Retired Associate Professor
SGTB Khalsa College, University of Delhi, Delhi-110007
Res: 932 Anand Kunj, Vikas Puri, New Delhi-110018.
Phone: 011-25518297 Mob: 9810359089
http://www.gurcharanfamily.com/
http://people.du.ac.in/~singhg45/
On Tue, Mar 6, 2012 at 2:21 AM, OZmic <[email protected]> wrote:
>
> Dear new friends,
> Thanks to Dinesh (surname supressed), I think I have found a forum that
> will stimulate me. I have been waiting for some plant names in Indian
> scripts to appear on the www since 1995 when I first launched the MMPND.
> Pankaj (surname supressed) contributed a few but back then the fonts were
> not available. I had to create images with devices that did not produce the
> exact words, the result was poor. Since then there has been an abundance of
> words in various scripts. We are now facing a new problem. Nomenclatural
> identification.
> There is the official nomenclature - taxonomy, and there is the vernacular
> (common names). Not always matching each other. Photos help but without
> photo, one needs to start from a strong basis. Hence my work since the
> 1985's, 1995 online.
> My point is: I would suggest that we use the authority names with all
> botanical names, that is for example *Azadirachta excelsa* (Jack) M.
> Jacobs as opposed to just the usual *Azadirachta excelsa* . Why? because
> the bot. name on its own may mean different things when used by different
> authorities. In order to track down the synonyms in the search for a
> positive ID a complete botanical name is the first strong step. I suggest
> the first 2 sites in order to find those generally up-to-date complete bot.
> names:
> < http://www.plantnames.unimelb.edu.au/Sorting/List_bot.html#sec.02 >
> < http://www.ars-grin.gov/ >
> These will also supply bot. synonyms and common names...and more. They are
> valuable when doing searches online. 10 names will return nothing and one
> will return hundreds of pages. I have had plenty of experience since 1995.
> These 2 sites are built on years of experience started long before the
> internet was invented. Do take advantage of that experience.
> There are also other sites dealing with bot. names but usually not as
> focused on international communication. Many of those are linked in some
> way to these 2 anyhow.
> Regards to all.
> Michel
