A TYPIFICATION OF SOME SUBFAMILY, SECTIONAL, AND SUBSECTIONAL NAMES IN THE FAMILY MALPIGHIACAE

Abstract

Franz Niedenzu's monograph of the Malpighiaceae in Das Pflanzenreichl published in 1928 is a monumental and masterful piece of work, the result of a lifetime of study. It was preceded by a treatment of the genera in Engler and Prantl's Die Natiirlichen Pflanzenfamilien in 1890 and by monographs of individual genera subsequently in rather rare publications of the Konigliches Lyceum Hosianum zu Braunsberg, sometimes given its Latin name Lyceum Regium Hosianum Brunsbergense. Although Niedenzu's taxonomic work is detailed and careful, he apparently made up his rules of nomenclature as he went along. He started work before there were any really definite rules and even after the publication of the Vienna Code of Botanical Nomenclature in 1905 he refused to abide by these rules. He changed the names of species that he did not like, proposed homonyms, assigned different ranks to entities without a change of authority, and so on. In particular, he ignored many of the subfamily, sectional, and subsectional names that had been proposed by his illustrious predecessors de Candolle, Ad. de Jussieu, and Grisebach and substituted new names of his own coining. In fact, he replaced many of his own names as he went along, because with changing concepts of the contents of groups the former names were not particularly or universally applicable. A prime difficulty with Niedenzu's work is that he did not work at all under a type concept. His new species were often based on many specimens, all technically syntypes, and no lectotypes have ever been designated for most of them. This is true also for his names