Quinquefolium Ség. 1754

Eriksson, Torsten, Persson, Nannie L. & Smedmark, Jenny E. E., 2022, What is Potentilla? A phylogeny-based taxonomy for Potentillinae (Rosaceae), TAXON 71 (3), pp. 493-505 : 496

Quinquefolium Ség. 1754 , nom. illeg.

In a supplement to Plantae Veronenses, Séguier (1754) validated the pre-Linnaean genus Quinquefolium with a short description. It had actually already been validated by J. Hill (1753; see Reveal, 1991), but that publication is on the list of suppressed works ( Wiersema & al., 2018 –). James E. Dandy wrote about generic names in Séguier’ s supplement: “Many of Séguier’ s names are in effect superfluous substitutes for Linnaean ones, this being evident from the species listed” ( Dandy, 1967: 19), and he listed Quinquefolium Ség. as a superfluous substitute name ( Dandy, 1967: 75). He must have based his interpretation on the first volume of Plantae Veronenses ( Séguier, 1745), because the supplement includes but a single species of Quinquefolium . Séguier did not cite Species plantarum ( Linnaeus, 1753), but his concept of Quinquefolium is similar to Linnaeus’ s Potentilla (except for the exclusion of P. anserina ). The type P. reptans is also included, and we agree with the interpretation of Dandy (1967) that Quinquefolium Ség. is a superfluous name for Potentilla , and thus illegitimate. We are not aware of any legitimate species name in Quinquefolium . Rydberg (1910) argued that the type for Quinquefolium in the sense of pre-Linnaean authors should have been P. reptans because of citations of images showing that species.