Citation hygiene 1: „A. Br.“ Addison Brown and Alexander Braun as authors of plant names

Abstract

The author abbreviation “A. Br.” is recommended by Brummitt & Powell (Authors of Plant Names, Kew 1992) to code the American botanist Addison Brown (1830–1913). However, it is also frequently and ambiguously applied to names of vascular plant taxa described by his contemporary German colleague Alexander Braun (1805–1877). Thus many plant names are run by electronic databases and bioinformatic systems as apparent homonyms made by the two authors. All names created by Alexander Braun should bear the author abbreviation “A. Braun” instead, necessarily so in electronic databases, in order to avoid pseudohomonymy by uncritically imported data sets.