Okay, first of all, a few clarifications. When I change a name, it isn't necessarily to add a synonym. Sometimes I'm initial capping the common names or correcting a misspelling. In this case, however, it does appear that I added the synonym and that I used the Catalogue of Life as my source.
An ambiguous synonym is one that is illegitimate. Usually, it means that the name never had accepted status as a botanical name. I probably added it here because we had an existing entry for A. angustifolia. The Catalogue of Life does not recognize A. angustifolia as anything but an ambiguous synonym.
Janet, I don't know why you're using the CoL Annual Checklist for 2010. It's 6 years old. You should be using the regularly updated CoL entries, updated most recently on 28 April 2016.
http://www.catalogueoflife.org...
If you look at the CoL entry for A. longifolia, you'll see that the source database was last updated in January 2014 and that the bibliographic citations include a couple of citations dated 2016.
http://www.catalogueoflife.org...
That's good enough for me to believe that A. longifolia is the accepted name.
The Plant List is a wholly unreliable source. I lost faith in it back in 2011 when I saw that it listed Buddleia and Buddleja as two different genera. It did correct this error in 2012, but it did not correct most of its other errors at that time. In most cases it simply moved all of its old data to the new edition.
