Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation

The Plant Taxonomic Database Standards series presents standards for formatting botanical data, prepared by the International Working Group on Taxonomic Databases for Plant Sciences (TDWG) to promote wider and more effective collaboration, dissemination and exchange of information among plant taxonomic databases. This third standard in the series clarified how to determine what information was needed in order to specify scientific plant names and how to organize those names for botanical databasing purposes. Because databasing needs vary, this standard was flexible. It was divided into four variants or levels, and so it provided a scale of options for rendering plant names according to the degree of specificity needed. It identified the elements that needed to be considered—taxa, names elements (species, species aggregate, intergeneric hybrids and graft chimaeras, interspecific hybrids and graft chimaeras, intraspecific categories, subspecies, variety, cultivar), author strings, classes of names, and reference citations—and provided recommendations. This standard was useful for taxonomic reference databasing but also met the databasing needs of natural-history societies, nature reserves and conservation centers. Included references and appendices.