Guide to the plant species descriptions published in seed lists from Botanic Gardens for the period 1800 - 1900.
By: Cees Lut (formerly: Chief Librarian National Herbarium of the Netherlands) cees.lut@naturalis.nl
In cooperation with Dr.J.F.Veldkamp (†) (31 March 1941 - 12 November 2017)
Welcome to this electronic and interactive guide to descriptions of new plants species published in seed lists.
Botanical Gardens have produced for a long time annual seed lists for exchange. In some European ones of the 19th century it was customary to include diagnoses, descriptions, and notes either in footnotes or in appendices. These lists were printed in a very limited edition and past issues generally were not kept. None of the old and large libraries in the world has a complete set of them, and the collections that they do have are usually incomplete. Smaller or more recent libraries probably have none at all. The Library of the NATURALIS Biodiversity Centre in Leiden, and the Hortus Botanicus (Leiden University) has a large collection of seed lists, but it, too, is far from complete. Collaboration with other libraries and taxonomists was essential.
In some cases the information was republished in contemporary scientific journals like Linnaea, Flora and Annales des Sciences Naturelles (Paris) and so became available to the general public. This website contains about 5000 new genera and species. It was difficult to go for all, locating all lists was impossible. Errors and omissions found in the Index Kewensis (and IPNI) were sent to IPNI.
The website aims to make the original descriptions in a searchable database available, with the title page of the seed list and its date of publication or an estimate thereof.
I I think that this seedlists website fill a gap and be of great use in places where botanical nomenclature and the history of horticulture are being studied.
- For HALLE see also the publication of Fritz Kümmel in Schlechtendalia 20 (2010) http://public.bibliothek.uni-halle.de/index.php/schlechtendalia/article/...