(188–191) Four proposals to clarify the rules on gender

John Mcneill, Vincent Demoulin, Werner Greuter, Jefferson Prado, Fred
Barrie, David Mabberley, Valéry Malécot, Karol Marhold, Karen L. Wilson

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To cite this version:

John Mcneill, Vincent Demoulin, Werner Greuter, Jefferson Prado, Fred Barrie, et al.. (188–191) Four proposals to clarify the rules on gender. 2022, pp.1342-1343. 10.1002/tax.12853 . hal-04289689

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(188–191) Four proposals to clarify the rules on gender

John McNeill,¹ Vincent Demoulin,² Werner Greuter,³ Jefferson Prado,⁴ Fred R. Barrie,⁵ David J. Mabberley,⁶ Valéry Malécot,⁷ Karol Marhold⁸ & Karen L. Wilson⁹

1 Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20A Inverleith Row, Edinburgh, EH3 5LR, Scotland, United Kingdom; and Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Canada

2 Institut de Botanique, B.22, Université de Liège, 4000 Liège I, Belgium

3 Herbarium Mediterraneum, c/o Orto Botanico, Via Lincoln 2/A, 90123 Palermo, Italy; and Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin, Freie Universität Berlin, Königin-Luise-Str. 6–8, 14195 Berlin, Germany

4 Instituto de Pesquisas Ambientais, Herbário SP, Av. Miguel Estéfano, 3687, CEP 04301-012, São Paulo, SP, Brazil

5 Missouri Botanical Garden, 2345 Tower Grove Ave., St. Louis, Missouri 63110, U.S.A.; and Department of Science and Education, The Field Museum, 1600 S Lake Shore Dr., Chicago, Illinois 60605, U.S.A.

6 Wadham College, University of Oxford, United Kingdom; School of Natural Sciences, Macquarie University, Sydney; and Australian Institute of Botanical Science (Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust), Mrs Macquaries Road, Sydney 2000, Australia

7 Institut Agro, Université d'Angers, INRAE, IRHS, SFR QUASAV, 2 rue le Nôtre, 49000 Angers, France

8 Plant Science and Biodiversity Centre, Institute of Botany, Slovak Academy of Sciences, Dubravská cesta 9, 845 23 Bratislava, Slovak Republic; and Department of Botany, Charles University, Benatská 2, 128 01 Praha, Czech Republic

9 National Herbarium of New South Wales, Royal Botanic Gardens and Domain Trust, Mrs Macquaries Road, Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia

Address for correspondence: John McNeill, JMcNeill@rbge.org.uk

DOI https://doi.org/10.1002/tax.12853

First published as part of this issue. See online for details.

The present rules in the *Code* on the gender of generic names have their origin in Art. 76 of the Berlin *Code* (Greuter & al. in Regnum Veg. 118. 1988), resulting from a proposal by a Special Committee on Orthography to replace the previous recommendations on the appropriate gender for such names (Demoulin & Nicolson in Taxon 35: 794–803. 1986).

This revision introduced the concept of “botanical tradition”, the first sentence of the new Art. 76.1 reading: “A generic name retains the gender assigned by its author, unless this is contrary to botanical tradition”, whereas the previous recommendation was that a Greek or Latin word adopted as a generic name should retain its gender (Rec. 75A.1 of the Sydney *Code*, Voss & al. in Regnum Veg. 111. 1983). The second sentence of the Committee’s proposal, changed editorially to a Note, explained that “Botanical tradition usually maintains the classical gender of a Greek or Latin word, when this was well established.” The remaining provisions of Art. 76 of the Berlin *Code* were essentially derived from the previous recommendations and also form the basis of Art. 62.2–62.4 of the current *Shenzhen Code* (Turland & al. in Regnum Veg. 159. 2018). It is clear that they were to a large extent intended to exemplify “botanical tradition” and to note where it departed from classical practice (e.g. “names ending in -anthos (or -anthus), -chilos (-chilus or -cheilos)” being masculine rather than neuter, cf. Art. 62.2(c) of the current *Code*).

The present wording of Art. 62.1 is essentially that adopted in the *Tokyo Code* (Greuter & al. in Regnum Veg. 131. 1994), which was a restructuring by Paul Silva (in Taxon 42: 189–190. 1993) of the wording in the Berlin *Code*. As a by-product of the change in the title of the *Code*, the phrase “botanical tradition” was replaced in the *Melbourne Code* (McNeill & al. in Regnum Veg. 154. 2012), by “nomenclatural tradition” without any intended change of meaning. As a result, the Article reads “62.1. A generic name retains the gender assigned by nomenclatural tradition, irrespective of classical usage or the author’s original usage. A generic name without a nomenclatural tradition retains the gender assigned by its author

(but see Art. 62.4.)” Neither “botanical tradition” nor “nomenclatural tradition” is defined, but they are replacements of “botanical custom” used in Rec. 75A of the Sydney *Code* and all preceding editions of the *Code* and originating in Art. 72 of the *Cambridge Rules* (Briquet, Int. Rules, Bot. Nomencl., ed. 3. 1935).

By contrast, the other provisions of Art. 62 are very precise. Article 62.2 establishes that “compound generic names take the gender of the last word in the nominative case in the compound”, Art. 62.3 that “arbitrarily formed generic names or vernacular names or adjectives used as generic names, of which the gender is not apparent, take the gender assigned to them by their authors”, and Art. 62.4 the gender of names ending in -anthes, -oides, or -odes (f.) and of those ending in -ites (m.). Clearly Art. 62.1 sets out the general principle and so the vagueness associated with the lack of any definition of “nomenclatural tradition” is not unreasonable, whereas Art. 62.2–62.4 deal with the specifics. This proposal is designed to clarify that the specific rules in all of Art. 62 take precedence over the general principle of “nomenclatural tradition”.

(188) Insert a parenthesis at the end of the first sentence of Art. 62.1 to read “(but see Art. 62.2–62.4)”.

Although, as the discussion above indicates, this change is probably editorial, the issue has generated sufficient confusion as to make it desirable that it be proposed formally ahead of the Madrid Congress. Tillmann & Gottschling (in Taxon 67: 203. 2018) proposed to conserve the name *Amphidoma* F. Stein (*Dinophyceae*) as being of feminine gender because the ending, -doma, is derived from the Greek neuter noun δῶμα (a house or a chamber of a house), whereas all 10 adjectival species epithets of *Amphidoma* have usually, but not always, been accepted with a feminine ending, contrary to Art. 62.2. In its Report (Andersen in Taxon 69: 1099–1101. 2020), the Nomenclature Committee for Algae recommended rejection of the proposal, quoting Art. 62.1, and arguing that “because all epithets for *Amphidoma* have been treated as feminine, the gender has been established
by nomenclatural tradition. Thus, there is no need to assign a gender
by conservation." Given this confusion, the primacy of the explicit
rule in the *Code* must be made clear.

(189) Add a new qualifying sentence in Art. 62.2, so that it reads
(new text in bold):

"62.2. Compound generic names take the gender of the last word in the nominative case in the compound (but see Art. 14.11). If the termination is altered, however, the gender is altered accordingly. An exception is made for compounds, with endings other than those listed in (a), (b), or (c), that were classical Latin words and in which tradition has adopted the classical Latin gender of that word even although the gender of the last word differs in the original language (usually Greek). In such cases the classical Latin gender is adopted."

The following suggestions exemplify the addition to Art. 62.2:

"*Ex. 6bis*. The classical Latin feminine noun *polygala*, applied to the herb milkwort, was derived from the Greek word with the same meaning, *πολύγαλον* (*polygalon*), itself a compound of *πολύ*- (poly-), many, and *γάλα* (gala), milk, a neuter noun. Linnaeus (Sp. Pl.: 701–706. 1753) adopted the classical Latin feminine gender for *Polygala* and that is to be maintained.”

"*Ex. 6ter*. The classical gender both of the Latin *onosma* and the original Greek ὅνοσμα (*onosma*) is neuter. Linnaeus (Sp. Pl., ed. 2: 196. 1762), in taking up the name for a new genus, treated *Onosma* as feminine; in this he was followed by some botanists but more adopted the classical neuter gender. Because the ending *-osma* is listed in Art. 62.2(b) as feminine, *Onosma* maintains its feminine gender."

(190) Make the following additions to Art. 62.2 (a) & (c) (new text in bold):

"(a) Compounds ending in -botrys, -codon, -dens, -myces, -odon, -panax, -pogon, -stemon, and other masculine words, are masculine."

"(c) Compounds ending in -ceras, -dendron, -derma, -doma, -nema, -sperma, -stigma, -stoma, and other neuter words, are neuter."

Because Art. 62 Ex. 7 notes that *Bidens* has been conserved with feminine gender, the addition of -dens in (a) will make it clear that generic names ending in -dens, other than *Bidens*, retain masculine gender.

Further, given that Greek is becoming increasingly unfamiliar, it is proposed to add to (c) -derma and -sperma, frequent word elements but ones that occasionally confuse those who tend to attribute feminine gender to all words ending in -a, and also -doma, not so frequently used, but that has had contrasting usages even in the same work and was the trigger for the present review of the rules on gender.

(191) Transfer the ending -anthes from Art. 62.4 to Art. 62.2(b).

The inclusion of -anthes in Art. 62.4 is the result of a proposal by Stearn (in Taxon 41: 786. 1992). While the proposal that names ending in -anthes should be feminine was approved without problem, the proposer, and later the Editorial Committee for the *Tokyo Code*, overlooked that it was inappropriate to include it in what was then Art. 76.4, now Art. 62.4. Prior to that, this Article, or its earlier equivalent Recommendations, was reserved for suffixes that were not derived from a word that could stand independently (i.e. ones such as -oides or -ites), whereas those that were derived from such a word were dealt with in the present Art. 62.2. The ending -anthes, like -anthos and -anthus (see Art. 62.2(c)), is derived from the Greek ἀνθος (anthos), blossom, flower, and so it is more appropriate to transfer -anthes to Art. 62.2(b), maintaining the feminine gender but making clear the difference between Art. 62.2 and Art. 62.4, which had been obscured by its inclusion in Art. 62.4.

Acknowledgements

As always, we are very grateful to Paul van Rijckevorsel for the
facility provided by his “Overview of editions of the *Code*” (https://
www.iapt-taxon.org/historic/index.htm) to locate rapidly when par-
ticular provisions of the *Code* were introduced or modified.

(192) Insert a new Chapter E in Division II on a Code of Ethics

Veronica Malavasi & Pavel Škaloud

Faculty of Science, Department of Botany, Charles University, Benatska 2, Prague 128 00, Czech Republic

Address for correspondence: Veronica Malavasi, veronica.malavasi80@gmail.com

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1002/tax.12854

First published as part of this issue. See online for details.

Issues of an ethical nature may arise from any scientific work.
The principles of self-regulation based on ethical values and stan-
dards of scientific integrity do not always work. To solve such prob-
lems, we are proposing the addition of a new Chapter E in Division II
to the *International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and
plants* (Shenzhen Code; Turland & al. in Regnum Veg. 159. 2018)
inspired by, and adapted from, the *International Code of Zoological
Nomenclature* (Ride & al., Int. Code Zool. Nomencl., ed. 4. 1999)

Code of Ethics (Appendix A: see at https://code.iczn.org/
appendices/appendix-a-code-of-ethics/). We believe that this code
should be applied not only by zoologists but by all scientists.
Moreover, it is important to note that there have also been cases
related to the botanical field: e.g. one of the early patronymic insults
is *Sigesbeckia*, “the unpleasant small-flowered weed”, named by
Linnaeus for Johann G. Siegesbeck (McClellan in Historical Biol.
33: 354–370. 2019). In our opinion, such a code would be a good tool