Plant Taxon (Scientific Name) Lookup
Lookup Latin plant names in internationally recognized plant lists either WCVP (Kew POWO) or WFO.
You are encouraged to experiment with lookups, it will not change any of your own plant data.
Cannot lookup cultivars, ex: Aeonium 'Kiwi'.
For hybrids use multiplication sign × not x.
The main purpose of 'Taxon Lookup' is to check that your plant names are considered 'accepted' (see below).
In addition lookups can point out any spelling mistakes or syntax errors in your plant names.
Lookups do not find plant names from images, you can use an online application like Google Lens to find the names of plants from photos.
The lookup uses one of two sets of data, WCVP (World Checklist of Vascular Plants) or WFO (World Flora Online).
WCVP is administered by Kew Gardens, new data sets are released about every 4 months.
WFO is administered by a consortium of Taxonomic Experts, new data sets are released about every 6 months.
Although WCVP is considered the standard WFO is offered because there are a few differences between the two.
Both data sets are stored within MOPDB and are optimized for speed.
Each has information for about 1.5 million plants.
In order to stay current MOPDB intends to grab the lists from WCVP and WFO when new ones are released.
Note that neither data set contains cultivars like Aeonium 'Kiwi'.
Modes allow you to query the data in different ways.
Single mode allows looking up a full taxon or one of the three main components genus, epithet (species), and infraspecific epithet. Suggestions are shown if the name searched for is not found in the data.
Looking up by "Scientific Name" or "Genus" finds full plant names or genera and shows the details of names found. Whereas searching by "Epithet", or "Infra-epithet" shows only the epithet or infra-epithet and indicates the best status of any full plant names that they are part of.
For example looking up "Epithet begins with chamu" shows "chamuchui" and "chamulense", both are accepted. The epithet "chamuchui" is used in two taxa "Gentiana chamuchui" which is a synonym and "Gentianella chamuchui" which is 'Accepted', so the best status is 'Accepted'.
The ordering to decide the best status is, from best to worst:
Accepted, Artificial Hybrid, Local Biotype, Orthographic, Synonym.
Note that results with a "bad" status are excluded, where "bad" is any of the following:
Invalid, Illegitimate, Misapplied, Unchecked, and Unplaced.
When suggestions are shown names with "bad" status are not excluded.
If you lookup by "Scientific Name" and your name is not found either as a direct match or a suggestion it may be that only part of the name is not accepted. Looking up the Genus, Epithet, or Infra-epithet on their own can show which parts are the ones not accepted.
WARNING: searching with "Contains" or "Ends with" can be significantly slower, especially if "Max. results" has a high value. In fact using very high levels of "Max. results" with "Contains" or "Ends with" can flood the system and cause the lookup to hang for a very long time in which case it is best to close the tab or the browser itself and wait for a while before trying again.
Filter mode allows you to find results based on a set of rules. The mode is called Filter because rules that you add restrict the results found. It directly accesses the underlying authority data but it does not show suggestions when no match is found. For simple queries it is fast.
Rules and groups are added using a graphical interface that allows the creation of complex queries.
There can be multiple groups and multiple rules within each group. The rules in each group and the groups themselves
are either connected by AND or by OR.
To create two groups connected by OR first tap the "Reset Filter" button and delete any remaining rules. Next tap the "Add Group" button twice. Tap the "OR" button at the top left of the filter and add any rules you need to the groups.
NOTE: Changing the authority in 'Filter' mode after setting rules can result in rules being removed because the two
authorities use some different rule fields.
Rules unique to WCVP are: 'Climate', 'Geographic Area', 'Life Form', and 'Hybrid Formula'.
Rules unique to WFO are: 'Subfamily' and 'Tribe'.
Also WCVP and WFO include some different values for 'Rank' and 'Status'.
When changing the authority the filter rules that do not exist for that authority are removed but values for 'Rank'
and 'Status' are not changed. If that is a problem tap the 'Reset Filter' button and re-enter the rules.
List mode allows looking up plant names in a list where the list can be typed in, pasted in, or read in from a file, or any combination of the three. The list format is one plant name (taxon) per line. A hash (#) and anything following it on a line will be ignored.
All mode looks up the scientific names of the plants you have added. It is only available to members. List mode and All mode only differ by how the list of names to lookup is collected.
Controls whether the lookup should differentiate upper and lower case when searching. Only shown for 'Single' and
'Filter' modes, the other modes always match case. However case is ignored when getting suggestions.
If logged in the default value is taken from your personal settings, see Settings
in the main Help.
This setting limits the number of results shown per plant name. It affects the speed of lookups although sometimes
the effect is small. It also affects suggestions in that suggestions cease to be sought when the number found reaches
this value. You may need to increase this value if you don't see enough suggestions. The spelling dictionaries are
stored in alphabetic order which results in suggestions that use the dictionaries being in the same order hence this
setting may preclude suggestions later in the alphabet.
If logged in the default is taken from your personal settings, see
Settings in the main Help.
Suggestions are not available in 'Filter' mode.
When a plant name is not found in the authority's data some alternative suggestions will be made depending on this setting. In most cases the higher the setting the longer the lookup will take. When using 'List' mode or 'All my plants' mode with a lot of names to look up it can take minutes to complete. The default value is "Medium" which should be sufficient in most cases. It is only recommended to use the "High" setting in 'Single' mode.
The suggestion process first looks for low hanging fruit such as changing var. to subsp. If that fails the process looks next for parts of the name that are marked as synonyms in the data and tries to use the new name. If that fails the process finally uses a spell checker using three dictionaries (Genus, Epithet, and Infra-epithet) built from all the valid values in the authority data. This step is designed to correct names with imperfect spelling.
If you are logged in the default value for 'Suggestions' is taken from your personal settings, see Settings in the main Help.
The number of alternate spellings returned from the dictionaries is limited to a maximum to avoid overloading the system, in extreme cases this can lead to the correct spelling being missed.
Say for example that 100 spelling suggestions were found for each of Genus, Epithet, and Infra-epithet. To check all combinations the authority database of nearly 1.5 million entries must be searched a million times which can take a while.
MOPDB has a notion of comments within scientific names. Comments are removed before looking up a plant name.
There are two types of comment ...
a) A comma and anything after it. Ex: "Aloe arborescens, Yellow form" will be looked up as
just "Aloe arborescens".
b) Parentheses and anything between them is considered a comment. Ex: "Aloe (#2) vera" will be looked up as
"Aloe vera".
These can be difficult. There are several different syntax methods to describe hybrids. Hybrid formulae can be complicated with the hybrid symbol '×' included several times, MOPDB currently only handles hybrids with one hybrid symbol.
Both WCVP and WFO only include interspecific hybrids that have been given a new name, ex: Aloe ×
chludowii which is a named hybrid between Gonialoe variegata and Kumara plicatilis.
MOPDB tries to help with hybrids that follow the forms Genus species1 × species2 or Genus species1 × G. species2 by splitting and looking up each species, first Genus species1 and then Genus species2. That is effective for first crosses (Species × Species) a.k.a. F1, but not for double crosses (F1 × F1) or three way crosses (F1 × Species) or triple crosses (three-way × three-way).
Within the WCVP data there is a field "hybrid_formula" which contains the names of the parents. However WFO data does not have that field and there are only a few plants in WCVP that have it filled in so MOPDB does not use it except to show it in the lookup results.
Intergeneric hybrids are between two different genera, ex: × Gasteraloe is a cross between a Gasteria and an Aloe. They appear in the data under the name given to the cross known as the nothogenus, ex: × Gasteraloe. However there are too many nothogenera for MOPDB to attempt to expand them, although when the WCVP data contains the hybrid formula that can help.
A cultivar is a variation of a species, subspecies, or variety, being created by man and not found in nature.
They can be created by means that include, selection, cross-pollination, and other forms of hybridization.
A cultivar name is written between single quotes, for example 'Sunburst' or 'Tom Thumb'. They are usually in English, not Latin. Cultivars are given names by the growers that create them but those names are not accepted as species by authorities like WCVP and WFO.
MOPDB removes any cultivar name from a taxon before looking it up.
"Taxon Status" is the term used in the data to describe the validity of each plant name.
Each plant in the WCVP data has a status of 'Accepted', 'Artificial Hybrid', 'Illegitimate',
'Invalid', 'Local Biotype', 'Misapplied', 'Orthographic', 'Synonym', or 'Unplaced'.
Each plant in the WFO data has a status of 'Accepted', 'Synonym', or 'Unchecked'.
For the results from lookups MOPDB shows a mapped status to the left of the plant name, see the table below, suggestions show the unmapped status.
If the plant is a cultivar or hybrid 'Accepted' is remapped to 'Cultivar', 'Hybrid', or 'Hybrid cv.' although they are not truly accepted because the plant is only found after either the cultivar part was removed or the hybrid was split into parents. However hybrids that have been given a new name can be truly accepted, ex: Aloe × caesia.
There are several factors that can influence speed.
There are those that are not controlled by MOPDB such as internet speed, web server load, and slowing due to backups or updates in operation.
And there are those that MOPDB does control.
Single lookups for Genus, epithet, or infra-epithet are usually fast.
The speed of lookups for complete taxa depends on the level of suggestions requested. Suggestions are only used when
the name being looked up is not found in the authority data, therefore in List and All modes the speed depends on
the number of names not found.
The value of 'Max. results' also affects speed although generally much less than suggestions can.
1) Lookups currently do not find scientific plant names that include English, examples: 'Aloe Hybrid' or 'Cereus forbesii monstrose'. Descriptions that are not a true part of the name should be written as comments, either following a comma or in parentheses.
2) Lookups will often not find names with cristata, monstrosa, etc. although they are Latin words the WCVP and WFO
data doesn't always include those forms of a plant, probably because they are just a growth form rather than a
separate plant.
However 'Suggestions' comes to the rescue; with it enabled further lookups will be made ignoring the extra words.
3) There are plants in WCVP and WFO that have a status of 'Invalid', 'Illegitimate', 'Misapplied', 'Unchecked', or 'Unplaced', one can only assume that they are there because, although incorrect, they have information that needs to be retained. MOPDB also keeps those plants in its lists which can lead to confusion at times. When your lookup only has results with a status being one of the above you can assume the name is not valid. However your lookup might also find a name with a status of 'Accepted' which should be considered valid.
4) It's possible to create filter rules that are impossible to fulfill.
As an obvious example: Genus equal Aloe AND Genus not equal Aloe.
The only solution is don't do that.
See the page on this website Plant Nomenclature Syntax or see the main help section called Plant Scientific Names. Both can also be accessed using help in the main menu.
When a lookup finds a plant with a status of 'Accepted' it is the recommended name to use. Obviously plants you obtained in the past may have been renamed, but it is also possible that you were given the wrong name, nurseries are not always accurate with their names.
The 'accepted' name of a plant is not necessarily either unique or static. Organizations like WCVP and WFO are
attempting to manage lists of the accepted names of all known plants, however they don't always agree.
Now that we have molecular analysis enabling us to see the DNA of plants we are finding there are plants that need to be
moved from their current species or even genus to another, hence they need to be renamed.
When a DNA researcher proposes a rename it has to be agreed by the authorities before they will publish it.
If you have a mind to keep the names of your plants up to date you can run a lookup of all your pants each time MOPDB grabs a new list from the authority.
Driven by the results of molecular analysis (DNA), many species have been re-named recently. Name changes have been dubbed with the terms lumping and splitting, used by Charles Darwin back in 1857.
Lumping is when it is found that two plants are actually the same species, resulting in both being given the
same (scientific) name.
Splitting is when it is found that two plants that had been given the same name are different, one of them is
given a different name, possibly an already existing name.
The trend in the early 2020's is towards lumping, perhaps driven by the idea that unless DNA shows differences between
species then they are the same. However there are some folks in plant collection and production who are of the opinion
that lumping has been over-zealous and that DNA analysis is not yet sufficiently advanced to make such decisions.
On the other hand there is an opportunity for DNA analysis to show us when two previously considered different species
are really the same leading to a much needed reduction in the number of names being used.
This error can occur when the list of plants found cannot fit in available memory. The error is fatal meaning the lookup cannot continue. If you get this error use your back button to return to this page and narrow the search criteria.
TBD
