# Myriophyllum mattogrossensis?



## Cavan Allen (Jul 22, 2004)

A bit of a name mystery here. I'm sure many of you are familiar with _Myriophyllum mattogrossense_. I came across a specimen of _M. mattogrossensis_ earlier.

Tropicos record:
http://www.tropicos.org/Name/15000108

IPNI search result for Myriophyllum mat*:
http://www.ipni.org/ipni/advPlantNa...off&query_type=by_query&back_page=plantsearch

Note that there are returns for mattogrossense and mattogrossensis, and both originate from the SAME citation! Miremonster, what do you think?


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## Adam C (Feb 7, 2013)

Great mystery Cavan!

I was interested in seeing if I could find the publication, but I didn't have any of luck. I managed to find parts of it, but not the dirt we need.

I did manage to find a document out of the Field Museum in Peru: http://fm2.fieldmuseum.org/vrrc/max/HALO-myri-matt-per-1915267.jpg showing a collected sample of m. mattogrossensis.

I really wish we had access to the source from 1915. I'm curious to see if someone else can find some data.


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## miremonster (Mar 26, 2006)

Hello Cavan and Adam,
I didn't read the original publication as well, but IMO they are just orthographical variants. I've learned some Latin, and apparently Myriophyllum mattogrossensis is grammatically wrong, mattogrossense is correct.
Myriophyllum and mattogrossense belong to 2 different declension types.
The 1st type, Nominative singular: -us (masculine), -a (feminine), -um (neutrum).
The other type, Nominative singular: -is (masculine & feminine), -e (neutrum). (there are more types)

Maybe already Hoehne made the mistake in his original description. There are similar cases, as Rataj's Echinodorus bleheri that was dedicated to Amanda Bleher: bleheri = "Bleher's", masculine, instead of bleherae, feminine, later he corrected that. I'm not well trained in nomenclature rules, but AFAIK it's allowed to correct grammatical errors in scientific names.

-Heiko


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## Cavan Allen (Jul 22, 2004)

I can get access to the original publication, though I think it may not be in English. And miremonster is likely right.

Yes, you can correct grammatical errors in names. But erroneous names like _Lilaeopsis chinensis_ (from the eastern US and Canada, not China), in which the entire name is a mistake, are not.


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## miremonster (Mar 26, 2006)

I've found the original publication on archive.org http://archive.org/stream/mobot31753002664263#page/58/mode/2up => "Read online", pp. 58, 59
Indeed, Hoehne wrote "Myriophyllum mattogrossensis". Maybe that was later corrected by other authors (Orchard?).
Last sentences are nice: "Podemos recommendar esta planta para pequenos aquarios, ..." (1915!)


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## Adam C (Feb 7, 2013)

Excellent find! Thanks for sharing. Any idea on translation?


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