Ragwort doesn't have enough letters to satisfy iSpot it is a topic title

1

Has the name for ragwort recently gone from Senecio jacobaea to Jacobaea vulgaris? The latter is being used on iNaturalist. It is recognised in the BSBI database but S. jacobaea is still the preferred name there. Is it a Sell and Murrell change? Or have we been out of step with Europe for a long time?

2

Nope - BSBI, VCRs etc all still following Stace 3 and using Senecio jacobaea L. (which is what Sell and Murrell have it as as well). Jacobaea vulgaris P. Gaertn is an accepted synonym, but not that anyone I know uses (and I can see massive potential for confusion with Senecio vulgaris!). However, Stace does note that Senecio ‘will almost certainly require splitting’ - but not until there is consensus on how this might be done. Hopefully it will take a while…

3

Wikipedia, for example, uses Jacobaea vulgaris. So does Tela Botanica and the Euro+Med database, and probably others. I suspect that we’ve been out of step with (some of) Europe for some time. However FNA (Flora of North America) still has it as Senecio jacobaea.

The problem with Senecio is that it involves a polyphyletic genus with over 1000 species; it’s a lot of work to disentangle all the species, thought it might be possible to deal with the British species in isolation. I’m not aware of any advance on Pelser et al (2007), available on JSTOR and ResearchGate.

Hibiscus is another genus which is a mess - Hibiscus is paraphyletic with respect two other tribes of Malvaceae plus several other genera.

4

I see HerbWeb has the curent name K000914463
Current name Senecio jacobaea
http://apps.kew.org/herbcat/getImage.do?imageBarcode=K000914463
But EOL has Jacobaea vulgaris and there are lots of references (if one cares to follow up)
http://eol.org/pages/579047/overview

5

Thanks. I’ll stay with Senecio for the foreseeable.