Conserved Name - Botany

Botany

A nomen conservandum is "(1) A name ... ruled as legitimate and with precedence over other specified names even though it may have been illegitimate when published or lack priority ... (2) A name for which its type, orthography, or gender has been fixed by the conservation process."

In botanical nomenclature, conservation is a nomenclatural procedure governed by Art. 14 of the ICBN. Its purpose is

"to avoid disadvantageous nomenclatural changes entailed by the strict application of the rules, and especially of the principle of priority " (Art. 14.1).

Conservation is possible only for names at the rank of family, genus or species.

It may effect a change in original spelling (see orthographical variant), Type (biology), or (most commonly) priority.

• Conserved spelling allows spelling usage to be preserved even if the name was published with another spelling: Euonymus (not Evonymus), Guaiacum (not Guajacum), etc. (see orthographical variant).
• Conserved types are often made when it is found that a type in fact belongs to a different taxon, or to a small group separate from the monophyletic bulk of a genus' species.
• Conservation of a name against an earlier taxonomic (heterotypic) synonym (which is termed a rejected name), ensures that these names do not force taxa to be renamed (i.e., a name rejected in favour of the conserved name could be used in a taxonomy that did not combine its taxon with the taxon of the conserved name).

Besides conservation/rejection of a name (Art. 14), the ICBN also offers the option of outright rejection of a name (Art. 56), another way of creating a nomen rejiciendum (nom. rej., rejected name) that cannot be used anymore. Rejection is possible for a name at any rank.