The oily shea-butter tree, should it be Butyrospermum parkii or Vitellaria paradoxa?

The shea-butter tree is a very popular source of a vegetable fat in Africa (more information at Agrifostree). This fat, called shea butter, is now exported and used in many cosmetics products worldwide.

Preparation of Shea butter.
(cc) David Fulmer on Flickr.

Cosmetics and other skin products that include shea butter lists it as  'Butyrospermum Parkii (Shea Butter)', following the INCI database of registered names of cosmetics ingredients.  (As usual, parkii should of course not be capitalized, as pointed out earlier.)

But if you look up the scientific name of the shea-butter tree in current botanical databases, the old Butyrospermum name has changed, and this species is now called Vitellaria paradoxa.  The tree is a member of the Sapotaceae family, famous for its soaping abilities.  The species has two older synonyms in the Butyrospermum genus, B. paradoxum and B. parkii (link). So why isn't INCI updated?  Because there has been a disconnect between the botanical taxonomic world, and the world of plant ingredients in commercial products. 

Shea Butter on LUSH's webpage.
Screen capture by BotanicalAccuracy.com

So companies like LUSH have to use the old, outdated name for this species instead of listing its updated and corrected new name until INCI has updated its database. The same is true for many other plant-derived ingredients that are included in the INCI database.  INCI is working on this, but it will take a while.

So, in summary, the scientific facts for the shea butter plant:

Correct scientific name:  Vitellaria paradoxa

Incorrect name:  Butyrospermum parkii

Is oxeye daisy a Leucanthemum or a Chrysanthemum?

The common garden plant, wildflower and sometimes 'weed' oxeye daisy is often listed under several different Latin names.  How can that be, and which one is right? It is a common plant all over North America, from Texas to Alaska to northern Canada (and Hawaii), and is originally from Europe.

What happened was that originally this yellow and white flower was named Chrysanthemum leucanthemum by Carl Linnaeus on May 1, 1753, in his work Species Plantarum. This book is the starting point for all scientific plant names forever...  Anything published before 1753 doesn't really matter when it comes to scientific names for plants. So for plants, in the beginning, it was Linnaeus.

Oxeye daisy
Illustration from Flora Batava by Kops et al. (1800)
Public domain (Wikipedia)

The French botanist Lamarck disagreed with this classification and wrote in 1779 that this species should be called Leucanthemum vulgare instead.   Botanists discussed and argued about this for a while, but for a long time most people followed Linnaeus' name.

Centuries later it was shown that the genus Chrysanthemum was actually a mixed group of species that weren't that closely related to each other, so the genus would have to be split up into several genera, some of which already had been accepted by previous botanists.  Scientists want only closely related species to belong to the same genus; it is the only thing that makes sense evolutionarily and logically. Linnaeus and other early botanists didn't have evolutionary information as a classification criteria (nor a scientific theory for that matter, that all came with Darwin's theory of natural selection in the late 1800s).

So, Chrysanthemum was split up in the late 1990s.  Which of the subgroups would get the original name Chrysanthemum?  According to the International Code of Nomenclature, which rules the scientific naming of plants, each genus has a type species, and that type species always has to be in the genus it is the type for.  The type for the genus Chrysanthemum was set in 1929 as the species Chrysanthemum coronarium, so oxeye daisy would not get to keep the Chrysanthemum name, neither would the beloved 'mums' in our gardens.  (Things got a little complicated when it later was shown that the type herbarium specimen for Chrysanthemum coronarium actually wasn't that species at all, but that is another story.)

Cultivated chrysanthemums. These are not oxeye daisies.
(cc) Pigsonthewing on Wikimedia

The horticulturalists were upset!  What about their chrysanthemums ('mums'), the popular garden plants that were cultivated all over the world?  Those species were now to be in a genus called Dendranthema.  Slowly this name got accepted under protests from the horticultural industry, until Piers Trehane said in 1995 - hey, we can propose an exception and keep the genus name Chrysanthemum for chrysanthemums by switching the type species to Chrysanthemum indicum (one of the mums),  if enough people vote for this change (here is the proposal for this).  So this was proposed, and after a few years and a vote among botanists, this was passed in 1998/99 as an exception to the rules of The Botanical Code. Now  Chrysanthemum includes the cultivated chrysanthemums, but not the oxeye daisy, and Chrysanthemum coronarium above was to be put in another genus (it ended up in Glebionis).

Then, if oxeye daisy can't be in Chrysanthemum, what genus name should it take?  Luckily, Lamarck had already put it in a genus named Leucanthemum in 1779 when he disagreed with Linnaeus, so the genus name Leucanthemum was available.

When a species changes genus it nearly always keeps its species epithet, the second word in its scientific name. It might change ending sometimes, but the earliest published species epithet stays, it has priority over later published species names.  But, that would be leucanthemum for oxeye daisy, since Linnaeus named it Chrysanthemum leucanthemum.  And that would mean a species named Leucanthemum leucanthemum, with the genus and species epithet the same (a tautonym), which is a total no-no in botany.

bison, which has the scientific name Bison bison
(cc) Syncrude Canada Ltd on Flick

Zoology loves those names, they have them for all kinds of animals, Crex crex (corncrake, a bird), Vulpes vulpes (red fox), Bison bison (bison) and so on. But for oxeye daisy, no way.  So, they had to look for the oldest name among other species epithets used for this species, and that was Lamarck, again.  He had called oxeye daisy Leucanthemum vulgare, and that is the name it has now.

So, Linnaeus was the first person that described this species, but Lamarck now gets the authorship for the current scientific name.

Oxeye daisy, now Leucanthemum vulgare
(cc) Alexander Schneider on Flickr

In conclusion,

CORRECT NAME: Leucanthemum vulgare Lam.

INCORRECT NAME: Chrysanthemum leucanthemum L.
[note, this is not an optional name, this is an old name that shouldn't be used anymore]

Who gets this right?
For example, USDA-PLANTS, Encyclopedia of Life (EoL), Wikipedia, and Royal Horticultural Society.

Who gets it wrong and needs to update their websites?
Well, lots of seed and plant companies (American Meadows, Victory Seeds, etc.), some state departments (Minnesota Dept of Natural Resources, Colorado, etc.), a bunch of garden websites, and WebMD.

[Updated 18 November 2014 with new Chrysanthemum type information provided by DH.  Thanks!]

Wikiherbia: Anise is not the same as star anise

The website wikiherbia promotes itself as the 'complete herb database' and provides information on medicinal plants.  It is in no way complete and lists only a little over 100 plants, and doesn't appear to be a very active website.  However, the information is still there, and people will search for information and find this resource, so it is important that the information is as correct as possible.  Unfortunately, there are some grave errors.

Screenshot of Wikiherbia web page on "anise / Pimpinella Anisum", by BotanicalAccuracy.com

The herb anise (Pimpinella anisum) is featured in wikiherbia, but not only is the Latin name wrongly formatted, but the associated image is of another species, star anise (Illicium verum).  The photo on the web page shows the fruit of star anise. The text is fully focused on anise, not star anise.

Anise and star anise are unrelated plants with different chemical profiles, with the only similarity being that they both have a compound that gives a taste that is somewhat similar to licorice   Anise is a temperate plant in the parsley family (Apiaceae), and star anise is a subtropical/tropical shrub in the family Schisandraceae.

This is how anise (Pimpinella anisum) looks like 

(it is very similar to cilantro, same group of plants):

anise, Pimpinella anisum
Public domain image, from Köhler (1887), Wikimedia

And here is star anise:

star anise, Illicium verum
Public domain image, from Köhler (1897), Wikimedia

Star anise is used for the commercial production of the anti-viral medicine Tamiflu and in Asian cooking, whereas anise is mostly used in European cooking and herbal medicine.

Common mistake: Centaurea vs. Centaurium, both centaury

The two plant genera Centaurea and Centaurium are commonly mixed up, even if they are very different and belong to different families.  Species in Centaurium have the common name centaury in singular, and centauries in plural, and unfortunately you often see this common name in herbal literature or in online sources for Centaurea too. 

CENTAURIUM (centaury) is a member of the gentian family, Gentianaceae.  This genus has about two dozen species, and they are nearly all bright pink.  The flowers have 5 petals, and are small, up to 1.5 cm (1/2 inch) across. (An image search for Centaurium shows all the varying flower types.)

Centaurium pulchellum 
(cc) Christian Fischer, Wikimedia.

CENTAUREA (knapweeds, cornflowers, star-thistles, etc.) is a member of the sunflower family, Asteraceae. There are hundreds of species in this genus, and they all have small feathery-looking flowers assembled in a tight flower head.  The petals can be white, blue, pink, or purple. The flowers along the edge are longer, and the ones in the center of the flower head resembles thistle-flowers, and they are closely related to thistles. (Image search showing the flower variation of Centaurea.)
     The similarity of the genus name Centaurea to Centaurium leds to confusion and the misapplied "centaurium" as a common name.

Centaurea montana
(cc) Jean-Pol Grandmont, Wikimedia

Other differing characters are that Centaurea usually has alternate leaves (Centaurium have opposite leaves) and the flower heads are larger in Centaurea than the single flowers of Centaurium.

So, why do we need to care which centaury that is in the herbal medicine, or reported?  Well, to begin with, these plant groups have completely different chemicals in them.  And for herbal medicine, it is the chemicals that we want, and we want the right ones.  Second, if we suggest to people to use these plants, you better have the right photo (and ingredient) for the plant you intended.  Third, it is just simply embarrassing if you are a company or publisher and gets this wrong.   It is a classic example of why common names can be troublesome if you want to be sure about what plant that was used. 

Here are some examples of where companies or other sources of information got it wrong:

• Medicinal Herb Info: Talks about Centaurium, but lists bluet and bluebottle as alternative common names, but those two names are only used in Centaurea.
• Specialty Herb Store: Same problem as above, lists common names only present in Centaurea for the medicinal Centaurium plant.  

Post updated 28 January 2014 with information provided by MF.

Lessonia: 'Marine lichen' is not a lichen, it is a red algae

Lessonia is a company that provides ingredients to cosmetics companies.  They specialize in exfoliators and botanical extracts, including several from seaweeds. 

So, what is a seaweed?  This common name has been used for all multi-cellular (= not one-celled planktonic) algae that grow (mostly) in marine areas, regardless of which group of algae they belong to.  So included in seaweeds are green, red, or brown algae, which all belongs to different evolutionary lineages. You have kelp (brown), sea lettuce (green), carrageenan (red), nori (red algae of sushi fame), and so on.

There are only a few flowering plants that live in the ocean similar to seaweeds, the most well-known being eelgrass (Zostera marina).   So, seaweed is a practical common-name term we humans use and it groups many unrelated plants together. Algae is the same, that group name is also a practical group name of no taxonomic use anymore since it doesn't define an evolutionary group with a common ancestor and common history.

The group 'Algae' in fact includes members from maybe 8-9 different evolutionary lineages.  We taxonomists sometimes call such groups 'taxonomic trashbags', since they contain a mishmash of many different things that are unrelated to each other.  But when you talk about oceans, we can use the term algae just to identify their plant life.

Irish moss (Chondrus crispus), a red algae.
(cc) Vilseskogen on Flickr

Back to Lessonia - this company sells something call Lichen Glycerin Extract.  In their brochure about this product, also called 'Marine Lichen', they say:

"Marine lichen lives on rocks, in pools, lower intertide."

"The Lichen glycerin extract is [...]  polysaccharides contained in this red algae.  "

The listed ingredient for the Lichen Glycerine extract following the INCI guidelines are:

"GLYCERIN & WATER & CHONDRUS CRISPUS EXTRACT"

Irish moss (Chondrus crispus).
Public domain image, Chondrus, Wikipedia

So, what is Chondrus crispus?  This species of red algae is often called Irish moss or carageen moss, and is the marine source of the compound carageenan, a thickener often used in icecream and many other food products (and some cosmetics too).  This plant has absolutely nothing to do with lichens, and in fact, there are no lichens that live in the sea.  On the rocks along the shore, yes, but nothing permanently under water.  To call this 'Marine Lichen' is as wrong as calling an elephant a giant ostrich.  

Why not call this MARINE IRISH MOSS EXTRACT?  

This plant has already the common name of 'Irish moss', which of course has nothing to do with real mosses that are green land plants - but traditionally commonly used names are OK to use.  Introducing a big misrepresentation by calling this plant a lichen is something very different. Lichens, by the way, are organisms where a fungus and a plant (usually green algae) live together in symbiosis.  Which is very cool!

 

Greening Singapore with temperate weeds?

2013 logo for Singapore's National Park Service
© Singapore National Parks, fair use.

I recently recieved an e-mail from Singapore and this nice logo above was attached to the e-mail.  It celebrates 50 years of Greening Singapore by their National Parks service.  I have never been to Singapore, but I have heard and read about its fantastic tropical flora and fauna, and how this country supports environmental sustainability.

The issue here are the flowers in the logo.  The trees appear to be tropical trees, but the nice wildflowers in the foreground appears to be mostly temperate weeds.  Maybe these are common in Singapore as well, but wouldn't you have wanted to highlight tropical flowers such as orchids, hibiscus, or maybe even some nice native wildflowers. Singapore is nearly on the equator, so about as far away you can get from our temperate flora and seasons.

The wildflowers in question appear to be (from left to right):

Close-up of logo above.

A thistle? (Cirsium?, Asteraceae) {also known as a common weed}

A hawkweed or dandelion? (Taraxacum, Crepis, Hieracium?, Asteraceae) {another weed}

An oxeeye daisy? (Leucanthemum vulgare, Asteraceae)

 and...

Close-up of logo above.

a blue bell (Campanula, Campanulaceae)

These would be the kind of flowers you find in (well, maybe outside...) London, for example, and they are typical of temperate areas.  I can't help wonder if the company that designed the logo just went online and picked any pretty flowers they could find, or sent out the work order to a designer without thinking about what plants that would be appropriate for this particular place. Of course there is artistic freedom, but in this case, the logo is supposed to celebrate the work of making Singapore a more green tropical city. 

If any Singaporean botanists read this, please let me know what you think, because I would love to have your feedback on this. 

The difference between stems, stalks, and petioles in rhubarb

This is the wonderful rhubarb season!  And for those of us that like the tart flavor, the red shiny stalks (or sometimes green) makes us imagine pies, fruit tarts, jams, and sauces...   Rhubarb is also showing up in spring issues of cooking magazines, radio shows, newspaper articles, and so on.

The inaccuracy that often is perpetuated with rhubarb is what we properly call the name the plant part we eat.  The 'stalks' we eat is the edible part of the otherwise toxic plant, and it is the leaf stalks.  The botanical, scientific name for this in English is 'petiole'.  This photo shows clearly how each stalk is connected to each leaf.

Rhubarb leaves with edible leaf stalks/petioles.
(cc) Dieter Weber, Wikipedia

The problem is that many times people inaccurately call it rhubarb stems.  A stem is a part of the plant that is a central shoot that holds the leaves, branches, flowers, and so on.  The true rhubarb stem is a hollow, nearly bamboo-like cylinder, which leads up to a terminal shoot that eventually develops flower buds. A stalk, on the other hand, can be both leaf stalk and the stem of a plant. Here is a photo of a rhubarb stem with flowers and small leaves:

Flowering rhubarb stem.
(cc) Septuagent on Flickr

Here are some examples of botanical inaccuracy when it comes to written online rhubarb information :

Wikipedia: "The use of rhubarb stems as food is a relatively recent innovation, first recorded in 17th century." 
{But Wikipedia gets it right in the beginning of the article on rhubarb.}

Royal Horticultural Society (RHS): "Rhubarb is a rhizomatous perennial whose stems (‘sticks’) grown as vegetable but used mainly as a dessert."   "Stems should be pulled rather than cut to prevent rotting of the remaining stump. "

Mark Bittman for The New York Times: "Buy the smallest stems you can find and use a vegetable peeler or paring knife to remove the stringy outer layer."

The New York Times: Restaurant NOMA in Copenhagen

In July 6, 2010, The New York Times published an article by Frank Bruni about the amazing and world-renowned restaurant NOMA in Copenhagen and the foraging of food products from wild plants by its chef, René Redzepi.  

The well-written article was accompanied by a slideshow named "In Copenhagen, Cooking without Rules", showing some of the nature-provided ingredients in chef Redzepi's food. Unfortunately the text accompanying some of the images were incorrect. The New York Times was notified about these errors, but has not yet corrected the information.

Screenshot from NY Times article, by BotanicalAccuracy.com.

Image text: "Axel berry shoots are among the various petals, leaves and shoots Mr. Redzepi integrates into his food."

The problem and its correction:  This appears to be whitebeam flower buds from a small tree named 'oxel' in Swedish, 'whitebeam' in English, and its scientific genus is Sorbus (in the rose family Rosaceae).  The flower buds on this photo are probably from either Sorbus aria (akselrøn in Danish, common Whitebeam in English) or Sorbus intermedia (seljerøn; Swedish whitebeam).  
     The rowan tree (Sorbus aucuparia, rönn in Swedish, almindelig røn in Danish) is closely related to these, but in my experience that never has white-hairy flower buds. I have found no record that this species has ever been called 'axel berry' or 'axel', in English, Danish, or Swedish for that matter.  
     I think the photographer misheard the Danish name 'akselrøn' or the Swedish name 'oxel' when he took notes and then never checked the typed up name with the source. The seeds in the fruits might contain cyanide, just like many other plants of this family, but the photo shows young flower buds.

Screenshot from NY Times article, by BotanicalAccuracy.com.

Image text: "Thuja cone"'

The problem:  This is not a Thuja (arborvitae) cone, it is a cone from a pine tree, most likely Scots Pine, Pinus sylvestris (Pinaceae), the pine species that is native to Denmark.  The photo shows an immature pine cone, before the seeds have formed inside it.  Pines are edible plants, even if they often have strong resin flavor.  Thuja is a member of the juniper family Cupressaceae, and it contains the chemical thujone, which you don't want to ingest too much of since it can be highly toxic.  The cones of the commonly cultivated arborvitae (Thuja occidentalis) look totally different, so there is no easy way to explain this inaccuracy in the information provided by The New York Times.

  (Both images are screenshots from the NY Times website used under fair use, photos © The New York Times.)

This post was updated with new information on 28 January 2014. Thanks MF for sending new information! 

"Rosa arctica" - the Kiehl's plant that doesn't exist

Rosa Arctica cream.
© Kiehl's, fair use

Instead of using the wrong name for a plant, you can invent a new scientific plant name to help you market a new product. This is the case for Kiehl's recently released products named ROSA ARCTICA, based on the 'resurrection flower', a rare plant named Haberlea rhodopensis in the African violet family (Gesneriaceae) and used as an anti-aging ingredient. This plant has nothing to do with roses, and the genus Rosa. There is no species previously named Rosa arctica, but Rosa is the rose genus, and arctica stands for being from the Arctic (which this plant is not from). And there is no ingredient derived from real roses in the product either.

 It appears that the naming of this product is a total marketing scam and misrepresentation, and an attempt to come up with a scientifically sounding product name that is also attractive to buyers.

I guess Haberlea rhodopensis didn't sound too great to the PR department, so they just invented a new name - which you can't really do in science. In marketing, sure, but I would consider this false marketing since Kiehl's are using an irrelevant and incorrect scientific name.   But it works, and Vanity Fair likes the name, since they wrote:

"[...] Kiehl’s scientists have taken this flower and made a
fabulous cream with it, aptly named Rosa Arctica."

What is so aptly with a name that doesn't represent the source plant? Imagine if it had been a name of a chemical name that had been changed into a new name similar to a harmless chemical and used for marketing. 

This case is also similar to the renaming of Patagonian Toothfish to Chilean Sea Bass to boost sales, except in this case they adopted the highly regulated scientific naming system for species for their marketing name - Kiehl's didn't just invent a new common name, which would have been much less disturbing.

Here is Kiehl's website ad for ROSA ARCTICA:

ROSA ARCTICA, skin cream by Kiehl's.  Image © Kiehl's, fair use

The flowers in the foreground in the ad are supposed to be Haberlea rhodopensis, I assume, but the flowers in the ad are not very similar to the actual flowers of the plant (see photo here from Dave's Garden website). Not much is known about this plant, also called Resurrection Flower, found in the mountains of Greece and Bulgaria.  It can survive for a long time, over two years, without much water, and then 'come to life' again when watered.

Extracts from the plant has been shown to help human skin (reference link), but at least some of this research was done by the company, Induchem, that is selling the extract, not by independent scientists.

On the official ingredient list on the product packaging, the extract from the plant (listed as 'Haberlea rhodopensis leaf extract', correctly according to INCI) is in or near the very end of the ingredient list, meaning that it is the ingredient with the smallest concentration in the final product. However, the inaccuracies continue, because on the Kiehl's website, the ingredient is listed as "Rosa Arctica (Haberlea rhodopensis)", which is totally inaccurate.  There is nothing called this name in nature, nor in INCI's official list of plant-derived ingredients.  And the reason is, of course, that Rosa Arctica does not exist, except as a marketing ploy for selling more of Kiehl's products.  It might work great on your skin, but there is no logical or ethical reason why this product should have a fake scientific name.

LUSH: Which bay leaf plant?

 On the cosmetics company LUSH's web page they list information about all their ingredients.  Here is their information for "Fresh Bay Leaf Infusion (Pimenta Acris)", which features a major botanical inaccuracy. 

Screenshot from LUSH webpage about bay leaf
© LUSH, fair use<!--[if gte mso 9]>

The bay leaf, laurel, bay laurel, or sweet bay commonly used in European cooking and herbal medicine is named Laurus nobilis.  In the text below the heading, this name is listed, with appropriate and correct information regarding this species' origin, history, and use. This is probably also the species in the photograph, but it is hard to tell. Laurus is in the laurel family, Lauraceae.

However, the name Pimenta acris refers to a totally different plant species, the West Indian Bay Tree, which has a multitude of common names and its origin is in the Caribbean.  It is also used for its essential oils in cooking, but high concentrations of the oil is toxic.  The current, updated scientific name is Pimenta racemosa, so Pimenta acris is a synonym, and this little tree belongs to the eucalyptus family, Myrtaceae. 

So, which plant did LUSH use in their products?  It is impossible to tell from their website, but lets hope they know...