Botanical usage note from UCJEPS

Question: Does UCJEPS allow the same name to be used multiple times with different scientific authors recorded?

Yes. We have more than 100 instances of the same name bearing different authors.

According to the Code of Botanical Nomenclature only the earliest instance of a name is legitimate. Subsequent employment of the same name based on a different type specimen is illegitimate but it happens frequently. These subsequent names are called "later homonyms", and traditionally are kept track of.

Note that subsequent usage of a name with a circumscription that differs from that of the original author is not considered a later homonym unless the type of the name is explicitly excluded; such altered usage is not tracked in nomenclature files.

In botanical usage, but not in zoological usage, the  author that first formally transfers a name to a new genus is recorded. So:

• Planta alba Linnaeus

when transferred correctly to Geoplantoides by C. Hoffman has the name

• Geoplantoides albus (Linnaeus) C. Hoffman

Subsequent attempts to make the same transfer would be termed superfluous and would not be recorded, except possibly in a specialty nomenclature database.

However, If it happens to be discovered that D. Greenbaum performed the same operation correctly the year before Hoffman, the name would be attributed to him,

• Geoplantoides albus (Linnaeus) D. Greenbaum

and the proper way to record that would be to edit the record for "Geoplantoides albus (Linnaeus) C. Hoffman" rather than to make a new record for "Geoplantoides albus (Linnaeus) D. Greenbaum"

Furthermore, there are some furthermores.

Dick Moe