CARLO ALLIONI AND HIS AUCTARIUM AD SYNOPSIM METHODICAM STIRPIUM HORTI REG. TAURINENSIS

Abstract

SummaryThe most important and best‐known work of the Italian doctor and naturalist Carlo Allioni (1728–1804) is his profusely illustrated folio‐sized Flora Pedemontana (1785). Many new specific names proposed by him, and commonly cited as having their first publication in this work, were, however, published earlier in his Auctarium ad Synopsim Methodicam Stirpium Horti Reg. Taurinensis, a paper issued first as an independently paged preprint in 1773, and then as a contribution to the fifth volume of the Royal Society of Turin's Miscellanea Taurinensia between 1774 and 1776. This 1773 publication establishes the priority of a number of names which, had they in fact first appeared in Flora Pedemontana (1785), would be superseded by other names published in the meantime; it preserves, for example, Carlina acanthifolia All. (1773) against C. chardousse Vill. (1779), and Primula hirsuta All. (1773) against P. rubra J. F. Gmel. (1775). Allioni's paper in all contains 76 validly published new specific names, of which only two were cited as from Miscellanea Taurinensia in the Index Kewensis, and none at all from the 1773 preprint; nearly half of the names were referred in Index Kewensis to Flora Pedemontana, nearly a quarter to authors other than Allioni, and the remainder were not included at all. In recent years the existence of these early Allioni names has become more widely known, and some have been adopted in modern works like Flora Europaea; but even here the names are referred to Miscellanea Taurinensia, not to the 1773 preprint which is their real first place of publication. Although most of these Allioni names are based on European plants, a few refer to extra‐European species.An outline of the history of Allioni's paper and of the belated and gradual spread of knowledge of its existence is given below. This account is entirely the responsibility of the author. Mr. J. E. Dandy, of the British Museum (Natural History), has, however, very kindly assisted him with the factual detail and also has appended an annotated list of the new names contained in Allioni's paper; and his colleague Dr. W. T. Stearn has pointed to the existence of a copy of the 1773 preprint in Linnaeus's library and contributed a note on its date of publication. In view of the rarity of this work arrangements are being made for a photographic facsimile to be published in the Journal of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History.