(2190) Proposal to conserve the name Juglandicarya against Hybothya with a conserved type (fossil Juglandaceae)

Abstract

In 1933, Reid & Chandler created the fossil genus Juglandicarya with four included species based on Eocene (London Clay) juglandaceous fruits, which could not be attributed with a certainty to any known genus of extant Juglandaceae Perleb. It was the authors’ policy and understanding of fossil plant nomenclature not to provide a type for the name of such a form-genus (later termed a morphogenus) (permissible in 1933), since Juglandicarya was originally diagnosed as “fruits which, although clearly referable to the Juglandaceae, are of doubtful relationship both to living genera and to one another”. A type for the generic name was later designated by Hu (in Palaeobotanist 1: 263. 1952) as J. lubbockii E. Reid & M. Chandler (‘lubbocki’), but this was not admissible as explained below. Since those times the genus has entered widely into systematic palaeobotanical literature (Arnold, Introd. Paleobot.: 359. 1947; Hu, l.c.; Scott in Amer. J. Bot. 40: 666. 1953; Brown in Profess. Pap. U. S. Geol. Surv. 375: 56. 1962; Mai in Feddes Repert. 92: 348. 1981 & Tert. Fl. Mitteleur.: 195. 1995; Tanai in Bull. Natl. Sci. Mus. Tokyo C, Geol. Paleontol. 18: 23. 1992), and become an attribute of the fossil history and modern systematics of the family Juglandaceae Perleb (Manchester in Monogr. Syst. Bot. Missouri Bot. Gard. 21: 1–137. 1987 & in Pl. Syst. Evol. 162: 243. 1989). However, when established by Reid & Chandler, Juglandicarya included the type of the previously described, monotypic genus Hybothya Endl. (Syn. Conif.: 275. 1847), Hybothya crassa (Bowerb.) Endl. (≡ Cupressinites crassus Bowerb. ≡ Juglandicarya crassa (Bowerb.) E. Reid & M. Chandler), and hence the generic name Juglandicarya is illegitimate (Art. 52 of the ICN, McNeill & al. in Regnum Veg. 154. 2012) being a superfluous nomenclatural synonym of Hybothya, and is automatically typified by J. crassa under Art. 7.5. This nomenclatural mistake perhaps arose from the decision of Reid & Chandler to provide a new name for these fossils because they were radically reinterpreted as angiospermous fruits, and not cones of conifers similar to Thuja L. as had been understood by Bowerbank and Endlicher. However, such a nomenclatural treatment is inadmissible (Art. 51) and the previous validly published generic name, Hybothya, is the correct generic name for these fossils. As this nomenclatural mistake was not recognized either by Reid & Chandler or their successors who adopted this name in the systematics of fossil Juglandaceae, and in order to stabilize palaeobotanical nomenclature in current use, by legitimizing the use of Juglandicarya E. Reid & M. Chandler, it is formally proposed to conserve this generic name with J. lubbockii E. Reid & M. Chandler as its type (since original materials of Cupressinites crassus Bowerb. were not preserved and available for re-study since its description) against its earlier synonym, Hybothya Endl., a name that has been out of use since the middle of the 19th century when it occurred in some taxonomic literature (Endlicher, Gen. Pl. Suppl. 4: 12. 1847; Unger, Gen. Sp. Pl. Foss.: 346. 1850; Goppert in Natuurk. Verh. Holl. Maatsch. Wetensch. Haarlem, ser. 2, 6: 180. 1850; Massalongo, Piante Foss. Tert. Vicent.: 241. 1851 & Consp. Fl. Tert.: 15. 1852; Roemer in Bronn, Lethaea Geogn., ed. 3, 2(3, 4): 126. 1851).