国际植物名称索引 IPNI – 英国托管的植物学命名数据资源

三机构联合维护的植物名称索引

IPNI 由英国皇家植物园邱园 (Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew)、哈佛大学标本馆 (Harvard University Herbaria) 和澳大利亚国立植物标本馆 (Australian National Herbarium) 三家机构联合维护, 邱园负责托管服务器与对外发布, 三方共同承担数据校对和标准制定工作。数据库收录的植物名称覆盖维管植物 (vascular plants) 范畴, 从科级到种下等级 (infraspecific ranks) 都在其中, 不含化石植物、藻类、苔藓和真菌——这一边界与《国际藻类、真菌和植物命名法规》(ICN) 对「维管植物」的范围界定一致。

数据来源与历史时间线

IPNI 的记录最初在 2000 年整合了三套既有数据源: Index Kewensis (IK, 1893–2002, 一百多万条) 覆盖全球种子植物从林奈《植物种志》(1753) 第一版起至 2000 年的种与属级名称; Gray Card Index (GCI, 1886 起, 35 万条以上) 收录新大陆维管植物的种下名称; Australian Plant Name Index (APNI, 1973 起, 6.3 万条以上) 收录澳大利亚维管植物全部学名。2004 年又并入 Index Filicum, 把蕨类 (fern) 与 1960 年以后发表的石松类 (lycophyte) 纳入覆盖范围。2016 年完成了一次跨数据源自动去重, 当前公开的检索结果只显示三套来源中保留的「主」副本, 其余副本仍可在完整记录视图里对照查看。

2022 上线的植物名称在线注册

2022 年 IPNI 推出在线植物名称注册服务, 是数据库自 2000 年上线以来首次向公众开放写入入口。作者可以在论文发表前为新名称申请一个 LSID (Life Science Identifier), 也可以把已发表但尚未进入 IPNI 的学名补录进来——后者对维管植物领域意义很大, 因为 IPNI 编辑组人数有限, 每年筛查的出版物数量相对庞大。注册流程在 Taxon 71(6): 1361-1364 (2022) 一文里有详细说明; 已发布 (Released) 的记录至少需要 24 小时才会出现在 ipni.org 主站检索结果里。

作者标准缩写与命名法规

作者名缩写遵循 Brummitt & Powell 在 1992 年出版的 Authors of Plant Names 一书确立的规则, 之后由 IPNI 工作组持续维护和扩充。缩写形式通常是姓氏全称或截短 (如 Adans. 代表 Adanson, Michx. 代表 Michaux), 同姓作者用首字母或后缀区分 (如 R.Br.、R.Br. bis、R.Br. ter 代表三位 Robert Brown); 拼写相近但重音或撇号不同的姓名按同形处理 (如 Löve 与 Love、O’Hara 与 Ohara)。IPNI 同时维护与 ICN 对应的标准引用形式, 是植物学论文和专著引用作者名时的权威依据。

数据规模与日常更新机制

截至最近一次公开统计, IPNI 已收录 1,433,000 条植物名称、18,500 条出版物记录和 55,100 位作者标准缩写, 新记录每日添加, 编辑组每年对大约 15 万条记录做一次标准化校正。每条记录包含名称拼写、作者、首次发表位置与日期、模式信息等基础书目信息; 原 protologue 链接指向 Biodiversity Heritage Library, 接受名与异名关系、原生地分布等分类学数据则通过 Plants of the World Online (POWO) 提供。检索结果默认按字母顺序排列, 高级检索支持作者标准缩写、发表年份和科级范围过滤。

Plant names index jointly maintained by three institutions

IPNI is jointly maintained by three institutions: the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Harvard University Herbaria, and the Australian National Herbarium. Kew hosts the production servers and acts as the publishing partner, while the three contributors share the workload of editorial screening and standard-setting. The dataset covers names of vascular plants from family to infraspecific ranks; fossil plants, algae, bryophytes and fungi are out of scope, a boundary aligned with how the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN) defines “plants” for nomenclatural purposes.

Data sources and historical timeline

Records in IPNI originally came from three sources in 2000: the Index Kewensis (IK, 1893–2002, over one million records) listing seed-plant genera and species from Linnaeus’s Species Plantarum (1753) onward; the Gray Card Index (GCI, from 1886, over 350,000 records) covering New World vascular plants including infraspecific names; and the Australian Plant Name Index (APNI, from 1973, over 63,000 records) listing all scientific names applied to Australian vascular plants. Index Filicum, covering ferns and lycophytes published after 1960, was added in 2004. An automated deduplication pass in 2016 merged overlapping entries, and the public search now returns the “top” copy of each duplicated name with the source duplicates still reachable from the full record view.

Online plant name registration launched in 2022

IPNI Registration launched in 2022 as the first public write pathway since the database went online in 2000. Authors can register a name before publication to obtain a Life Science Identifier (LSID) for use in the printed paper, or add a name that has already been published but is missing from IPNI. The workflow is described in Taxon 71(6): 1361-1364 (2022); released records take at least 24 hours to appear in the main search at ipni.org. The registration service is free and open to anyone, although only vascular plant names are accepted.

Author standard forms and the nomenclatural code

Author standard forms follow Brummitt & Powell’s Authors of Plant Names (1992), with new abbreviations and corrections added continuously by an IPNI working party. A standard form is usually a surname or its abbreviation (e.g. Adans. for Adanson, Michx. for Michaux), qualified with initials or a suffix where needed to distinguish same-surname authors (R.Br., R.Br. bis, R.Br. ter for three Robert Browns). Names differing only by an accent or apostrophe (Löve vs Love, O’Hara vs Ohara) are treated as homonymous. The list is a reference for botanical papers and monographs citing author names under ICN.

Dataset size and daily update workflow

The most recent public statistics list 1,433,000 plant names, 18,500 publication records and 55,100 author standard forms. New records are added daily, and around 150,000 records are standardised each year. Each record carries spelling, author, place and date of first publication, and type information where available; links to protologues point to the Biodiversity Heritage Library, while accepted names, synonyms and native distribution are delegated to Plants of the World Online (POWO). The default search returns alphabetical results, and an advanced search filters by author abbreviation, publication year and family.

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