Index Nominum Genericorum

The Index Nominum Genericorum (ING), a collaborative project of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) and the Smithsonian Institution, was initiated in 1954 as a compilation of generic names published for all organisms covered by the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature.

The original intent of the ING was to bring all generic names of plants together in a single list to reveal homonymy between groups. In addition, ING includes bibliographic citations and information about the typification and nomenclatural status of generic names. The index was first published in book form in 1979 (Farr et al., 1979). A supplement was also published (Farr et al., 1986). While a second supplement is planned, a hard copy is immediately out of date, and for users with access to the Internet, the World Wide Web offers promise as a useful platform for a collaborative project such as this. Current work on the ING is supported by the Smithsonian Institution, IAPT, and the University of Utrecht, The Netherlands. The content of the database was developed over a 40-year period by the efforts of more than 100 collaborators.

This electronic version must be considered a draft edition. The database is constantly being revised as new information becomes available. The ING database is fairly current through 1990. Names in some plant groups are more up to date than others and the editors are making every effort to bring ING's coverage up to date. Each entry is followed by the date it was extracted from the original mainframe database (9 February 1996) or a later date if the record was added or updated after that time. New or changed records will be added to this Web presentation at the beginning of every month. Generic Names from the ING list that are recognized in the publication Names in Current Use for Extant Plant Genera (Greuter et al., 1993) are denoted with a [C] preceding the entry.

Data URL: http://botany.si.edu/ing