Here comes another long-winded blather.
There are two different ways to look at conflicts between "Accepted" and "Synonym" in databases.
1. Taxonomic: As Mr. Pfeiffer pointed out, there may be controversy surrounding a proposed nomenclature change that allows for more than one accepted name for some period of time. I'd assume that the Plant Admin would decide whether to be an early adopter or wait for consensus.
2. Online Publication: How recently the dataset was updated. This is often more important in determining whether a plant is shown as accepted or a synonym, especially when changes are made to genera. This issue may have nothing to do with taxonomic controversy, simply lack of resources to regularly update online.
-The Plant List is Version 1 which went online in December 2010. According to the website "Any comments concerning the data will be fed back to the owner of the original data record(s) concerned. Corrections will not appear in Version 1 of The Plant List, rather such corrections where accepted will be made in the original data sources and hence be incorporated into future versions of The Plant List." That makes revision a rather cumbersome process and results in out of date info now.
-ITIS, concentrating on North American taxa, updates when info is supplied and verified.
-The USDA Plants Database lags behind ITIS.
-TROPICOS (Missouri Botanical Garden) seems to have a commitment phobia. Good on dates though.
-The specialty society and plant type databases, like ILDIS (International Legume), may have the most complete datasets, but some don't list a verification date.
I'm assuming the most recent verified publication date should be the one "accepted" by the ATP database, with citation and DATE. An example:
Oenothera lindheimeri, Accepted, ITIS (2011), with a link to the site if possible (ITIS has instructions for automatically linking to the required plant as well as extracting particular pieces of data). A link to the original publication on the parent plant page(s) would really be nice if available:
http://si-pddr.si.edu/dspace/b...
For me, the reference citation and date are critical (obviously not for every plant, but certainly for those with recent revisions). Otherwise, users will find Gaura popping up as Oenothera and assume ignorance by ATP as The Plant List, USDA Plant Database, RHS, NPIN (Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center), and a number of non-North American databases ALL list
Gaura lindheimeri as "Accepted".
Just wanted to raise this issue before it's lost as I see no fields for reference or date in the revised scheme.
