Author Citation (botany) - Basic Citation (simplest Form)

Basic Citation (simplest Form)

The simplest form of author citation in botany applies when the name is cited in its original rank and its original genus placement (for binomial names and below), where the original author (or authors) are the only name/s cited, and no parentheses are included. When citing a botanical name including its author, the author's name is often abbreviated. To encourage consistency the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (ICBN) recommends the use of Brummitt & Powell's Authors of plant names (1992), where each author of a botanical name has been assigned a unique abbreviation. These standard abbreviations can be found at the International Plant Names Index.

For example in:

• Rubus L.

the abbreviation "L." refers to the famous botanist Carl Linnaeus who described this genus on p. 492 of his great work Species Plantarum in 1753.

• Rubus ursinus Cham. & Schldl.

the abbreviation "Cham." refers to the botanist Adelbert von Chamisso and "Schldl." to the botanist Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal; these authors jointly described this species (and placed it in the genus Rubus) in 1827.

The Latin term "et" can be used in place of the ampersand symbol "&", also the abbreviation of author names is not obligatory, thus the following forms of citation for the above species are all equally correct:

• Rubus ursinus Cham. & Schldl.
• Rubus ursinus Cham. et Schldl.
• Rubus ursinus von Chamisso & von Schlechtendal
• Rubus ursinus von Chamisso et von Schlechtendal