Les arbres du Brésil dans deux dictionnaires historiques : Le Dictionnaire universel de Basnage et le Vocabulario de Bluteau

Publié en 1701, la version du Dictionnaire universel de Furetière révisée par l’émigré protestant Henri Basnage de Beauval contient de nombreuses mentions de la flore et de la faune brésiliennes, ce qui peut parait surprenant dans un dictionnaire de français. L’explication de cette singularité lexicographique se trouve dans le fait que Basnage a fait appel à un expert en histoire naturelle, le Dr. Régis, médecin huguenot réfugié à Amsterdam. Régis a créé des entrées très détaillées à partir de nombreuses sources en botanique et de récits des voyageurs de l’époque. L’approche qu’il propose dans ces entrées est véritablement encyclopédique. Dans ce texte, nous analysons les entrées concernant des arbres du Brésil afin de retrouver l’ensemble des textes sources employés par Régis. Nous comparons les entrées du Dictionnaire universel avec l’autre grand dictionnaire encyclopédique de l’époque, le Vocabulario portugais compilé par Bluteau (1712-1728). Les sources utilisées par Bluteau nous permettent quant à elles de mieux comprendre les descriptions de la flore brésilienne à une époque où la classification des plantes restait à faire et où la terminologie botanique était encore balbutiante.

The nomenclatural status of the amphibian and reptile nomina introduced by La Cepède in his Histoire Naturelle des Quadrupèdes Ovipares et des Serpens, with comments on various questions of zoological nomenclature

The ‘suppression’ (invalidation) for nomenclatural purposes by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature of the work Histoire Naturelle des Quadrupèdes Ovipares et des Serpens first published by La Cepède from 1788 to 1790 brought no benefit of any kind to zoological taxonomy and nomenclature but generated several nomenclatural problems. Here we review the history of the many discussions and proposals, as well as the successive and contradictory decisions of the Commission, regarding this work and the new nomina it contains, and we make new proposals to solve some of the problems created by these decisions. We suggest the Commission should take the initiative to restore nomenclatural availability to 18 nomina of La Cepède invalidated or of unclear status following its previous actions. More generally, we think that the use of the Plenary Power by the Commission should be more strictly regulated and made less easy and straightforward, and that the whole invalidation of complete works that have been considered as nomenclaturally available for a very long time in many works (e.g., 100 works in the 100 immediately preceding years) should be forbidden, and that the Commission should rather concentrate its attention and action on nomina rather than on works. Besides, we show that the snake nomen Coluber trigonocephalus Donndorff, 1798, currently considered valid, is invalid, and should be replaced by the nomen Coluber capitetriangulatus Bonnaterre, 1790.

A new species Lappula botschantzevii (Boraginaceae) from the Northern Africa

A new species, Lappula botschantzevii, is described from the desert zone of North-Western Africa. The new species belongs to the section Lappula and is close to the species L. patula, from which it differs in a smaller corolla, a scorpioid inflorescence (bilateral flowers) with loosely spaced flowers, a heteromorphic coenobium with two types of eremocarps: A) winged with glochids and a large number of spines along the edges of the disc of eremocarps and B) with a second short row of spines. The species is described based on samples from collections housed in three herbaria: Herbarium of the Komarov Botanical Institute RAS, Sankt-Peterburg (LE, Russia) and Muséum National d ‘Histoire Naturelle, Paris (P, France), Université de Montpellier (MPU). It is named after the Russian botanist Viktor Petrovich Botschantzev, who spent many years studying the flora of Africa and who collected samples of the new species. The absence of holotypes required the typification of the names of the studied species Lappula patula, L. capensis and L. eckloniana.