Lectotypification of the name Agrostis ventricosa Gouan (Poaceae)

Gastridium ventricosum (Poaceae) is the currently accepted name of Gouan’s Agrostis ventricosa, whose previous unclear type designation is briefly discussed and superseded. All relevant sources, specimens, illustrations, and the author’s relevant correspondence are carefully evaluated, the original material and possible type specimens are thoroughly discussed for the purpose to fix the precise taxonomic application of the name. We have chosen as the best admissible lectotype a newly discovered, well-preserved specimen enclosed in a letter sent by Antoine Gouan to Carl Linnaeus in 1761. This letter, Ref. L2998, is preserved in the Linnean Society of London’s collections (LINN) and was drawn up a year before the publication of the species name.

Cryptic species and taxonomic troubles: a rebuttal of the systematic treatment of the Asian ladies’ tresses orchids (Spiranthes species; Orchidaceae) by Pace et al. (2019)

In a recent research article by Pace et al. (2019), the authors claimed to have used information from phenology, morphology and molecular phylogenetics in their nomenclatural review of the Spiranthes sinensis complex. However, there are several scientific and botanical nomenclature issues with the Pace et al. (2019) paper in addition to its many errors and misinformation, which can be severely misleading and have the potential to affect our understanding of the highly complex Asian Spiranthes group. Here, we compare and critique their study in light of our study published prior to the article in the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society. We suggest that the authors should have resorted to improved and new molecular data and a truly integrative analysis to support: (1) re-circumscription of the S. sinensis species complex for each of the six species they recognized, and the treatment of S. hongkongensis as a hybrid; and (2) all the new synonymies they proposed for Asian Spiranthes.

Public science in the private garden: Noblewomen horticulturalists and the making of British botany c. 1785–1810

This study considers three noblewomen – Lady Amelia Hume (1751–1809), Jane Barrington (1733–1807), and Mary Watson-Wentworth, Marchioness of Rockingham (c. 1735–1804) – whose contributions to plant studies were so important that Linnean Society President James Edward Smith dedicated three books to them. Their skills in cultivating newly imported exotic plants rivaled those of elite nurserymen, and taxonomists of the highest caliber came to depend on them to unlock information encoded within flowers to enable classification and publication. Eventually, the women played strategic roles within national scientific studies of the world’s plants orchestrated by Smith, Joseph Banks, and William Roxburgh. The stories of Hume, Barrington, and Rockingham complicate our understandings of the gendered, professional, and disciplinary hierarchies of knowledge that constituted British science in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. They also resituate the domestic hothouse as a publicly engaged laboratory and museum.

Botanical Networking: Four Holograph Letters from Charlotte Smith to James Edward Smith

Four holograph letters from the poet and novelist Charlotte Smith (1749–1806) to the botanist James Edward Smith (no relation) have recently come to light. They are published here in full for the first time, with scholarly annotations and a brief introduction. J. E. Smith purchased Linnaeus's collections in 1784 and brought them to England, where he founded the Linnean Society of London. Charlotte Smith's letters to him, written between 1797 and 1803, provide fresh perspectives on her vocation as an author, her botanical pursuits, and her participation in the scientific networks of the English Enlightenment. She inhabited a vernacular culture, focused on locality, in which there was no division between natural science and the arts. The letters open a window on to the everyday life of an impoverished woman writer, and reveal dimensions of her personality and intellectual interests beyond what is found in her published writings.

Pensamiento evolutivo de Milton Gallardo: destacado biólogo chileno

Milton Gallardo Narcici, Ph.D. es un destacado biólogo chileno que ha visitado el Ecuador en varias ocasiones; la primera fue durante su participación en el Programa Prometeo Viejos Sabios, que mantuvo por varios años la SENESCYT. Estudió Ciencias Biológicas en la Universidad Austral de Valdivia, obtuvo su doctorado en la New Mexico State University, USA, en 1984. Su especialización es la Genética evolutiva de micromamíferos y la biología evolutiva. En este campo ha publicado 90 artículos revistas científicas especializadas como: Nature, Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, Evolution, Journal of Mammology, Genomics, Biochemical Systematics, International Journal of Mammalian Biology, Genome Research, etc. Es autor del libro: “EVOLUCIÓN: El Curso de la Vida”, publicado el año 2011 en Buenos Aires, por la Editorial Médica Panamericana. Este magnífico tratado de evolución biológica, escrito por un científico latinoamericano, aborda el apasionante tema de la evolución desde la perspectiva actual de genética y la genómica.

John Adams FLS of Pembroke (1769–1798): a forgotten Welsh naturalist and conchologist

John Adams was a member of a long line of landed gentry from Pembrokeshire, Wales. At a young age, he became a Fellow of the Linnean Society and read four papers before his untimely death by drowning at the age of 29. He described 53 invertebrate species as new to science, mostly from small molluscan shells, but he should be regarded as a naturalist, not a shell collector. He read mathematics at Cambridge University and seems to have relied heavily on his library and social connections to develop his expertise in natural history. Although never publishing on botany, the annotations in his botanical books and his connections with John Symmons and James Edward Smith show him to be competent with the British flora.