Conophytum louisae

[Terry S.]

A name only has priority in its own rank. Therefore if a name is published at the species level, e.g. C. louisae then it only has date priority as a species. As soon as you take it down to subspecies or variety as with C. bilobum ssp. altum, then louisae has no priority. The long stemmed taxon, altum is not particularly variable and so there is no real need to retain lousiae even as a cultivar name.

When you decide that a species would be better regarded as a subspecies or variety, there is no compulsion to retain the original name within the new rank, although it would often be helpful to the users of the names to do so.

Oh, and the percentage symbol % is the wild card in IPNI.

[ChrisR]

As Phil has explained, Reverend Meyer's daughter for whom this was dedicated by Schwantes in 1930, was luise and not luisa........hence it was (should have been) luiseae and not luisae. Conophytum altum had already been described by Bolus three years before so so takes precedence.

All this sort of interesting historical Conophytum info is in Appendix 2: Taxonomic Index at the back of Hammer's Conograph. My most used and favourite section of the book.

[Terry S.]

Note that altum only has date precedence at the species level. When Steven Hammer decided that this was better as a subspecies of bilobum, it was his choice to use the earlier name altum. He could actually have called it anything: subsp. louiseae or subsp. terryi would both have been acceptable.

[conolady]

So much expert information: thank you all. I so wish I owned a copy of the Conograph. Still, at least I have Dumpling. And I'm thinking SH missed a trick by not using terryi!

[Roatavator]

Yes Trudy, me too! Like you I’ve got “Dumpling” and would love the earlier book. Annoyingly desirable Cono literature seems to match the price of desirable Conos!

[conolady]

Yes Trudy, me too! Like you I’ve got “Dumpling” and would love the earlier book. Annoyingly desirable Cono literature seems to match the price of desirable Conos!

Absolutely. We all need to win the Lottery...! I got lucky on eBay and got Cole's Lithops at a very good price, so that's a start.