Tony,

A mix up in the method generating APNI name strings reusing the HISPID hybrid indicator code for named hybrid - 'X' . Now fixed.  Perhaps more interesting is that this method has been in place since 1992 and while, since then,  the APNI web interface has addressed c. 12 million download requests not one of them has resulted in a complaint about the style of the hybrid indicator.  I wonder if anybody cares.

One complaint that we do have though is that hybrid indicator upsets searching and sorting at least for named generic hybrids. It seems that users of the data would like to see it separated from the name string completely.  

greg

On 12 December 2010 08:10, <Tony.Rees@csiro.au> wrote:
Hi Paul, all,

Well, if the existing ANBG software code is displaying the hybrid symbol as an uppercase rather than a lowercase "x", then I would say there was something wrong with it, since this usage is not supported by the ICBN.

In any case, to summarise, a recipient / parser of incoming taxonomic names and associated data must therefore be able to cope successfully with hybrid indicators for genera in any of the following formats:

 ×Foo (ICBN preferred usage as per examples)
 × Foo (apparently tolerated, since white space appears to be optional??)
 x Foo (ICBN preferred alternative)
 X Foo (apparently incorrect, but found in some quite reputable systems)
 xFoo (again, probably tolerated, but not sure...)

have I missed anything? (e.g. "Goo × Hoo" or variants thereof?)

I am also presuming that in all these cases, the equivalent canonical version would be Foo. Does this mean that an extra DwC field would also be needed now, for hybrid indicator?

Regards - Tony
________________________________________
From: Paul Murray [pmurray@anbg.gov.au]
Sent: Saturday, 11 December 2010 4:05 PM
To: Rees, Tony (CMAR, Hobart)
Cc: morris.bob@gmail.com; tdwg-content@lists.tdwg.org
Subject: Re: [tdwg-content] canonical name for named hybrid & infragenericnames [SEC=UNCLASSIFIED]

On 10/12/2010, at 5:47 PM, <Tony.Rees@csiro.au> <Tony.Rees@csiro.au> wrote:

> Dear all,
>
> Paul Murray wrote:
>
>> A generic name may be marked as a hybrid. It is rendered
>>      × Foo
>
>
> Actually my understanding is that ×Foo is the Code-endorsed version:


Hmm ... . Well, perhaps there's an issue with our existing (software) code.

http://www.anbg.gov.au/cgi-bin/apni?taxon_id=272817
http://www.anbg.gov.au/cgi-bin/apni?taxon_id=40429

There are only 9 genera in APNI that look like this.
X Cynochloris Clifford & Everist
X Calassodia M.A.Clem.
X Agropogon P.Fourn.
X Chilosimpliglottis Jeanes
X Vappaculum M.A.Clem. & D.L.Jones
X Taurodium D.L.Jones & M.A.Clem.
X Glossadenia Kavulak
X Cyanthera Hopper & A.P.Br.
X Festulolium Asch. & Graebn.

Perhaps the issue is that it's a shade tricky to get it right if you have to use the letter, and so we err on the side of caution and put spaces around the genus name. Although a multiplication sign is preferred to an 'x', I believe our powerbuilder interface was written back in the day before all this new-fangled unicode. Or perhaps it's simply that getting Windows to do proper multiplication signs involves explaining codepages to the windows oracle client: a byzantine process at best, and one which involves getting Admin access to the box. Hence the 'x'.

(Once, ages ago, I got oracle sql-plus to work correctly on one Windows machine on the departmental network, but we never did succeed in getting the machine sitting right next to it to do umlauts properly. Our users addressed this issue by inserting html escape codes into the data.)

In any case - anyone looking to parse names into their components may encounter something like this.

Oh - here's some more:

http://www.anbg.gov.au/cgi-bin/apni?taxon_id=257927
xAstackea
xAstackea 'Winter Pink'
xChamecordia
xChamecordia 'Eric John'
xChamecordia 'Jasper'
xChamecordia 'Southern Stars'
xChamecordia 'Susie'
xRhinochilus
xRhinochilus 'Dorothy'

I think that the issue is that these genera were only inserted into the data in order to make it possible to construct the cultivar name. The genera are not published scientific names at all - 'Chamecordia' doesn't appear anywhere as a genus name except in these records (heck: even google has never heard of it), but Wrigley, J. & Fagg, M. (2003) named the cultivars thusly, so we have to jam them into the data somehow.

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Greg Whitbread
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Australian National Herbarium
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