The genus Uragoga
The name Uragoga was first mentioned by Linnaeus in his early works developing plant taxonomy, where it was spelled "Ouragoga". This name was not used by Linnaeus in the Species Plantarum of 1753, when our plant nomenclature starts, nor afterward by Linnaeus or anyone else until Baillon's work in the 19th century. Baillon published a number of important taxonomic treatments of various families, but he used different nomenclatural practices than many other authors so some of his work is not concordant with our current practices. One of his practices considered Linnaean names from before 1753 to be validly published, including Uragoga L. (Rubiaceae). Under our current Code of Nomenclature, all pre-1753 names are invalid.
Baillon published taxonomic and anatomical studies of various groups of Paleotropical Rubiaceae in the 1870's, and took up the name Uragoga here because he considered it to have a publication date from the 1730's and thus to have priority over the generic names published later. Baillon did not intend to publish this as a new genus, because he believed that Uragoga was already described and published. It was not validly published, though, according to our modern rules, but Baillon's synoptic treatment of Uragoga (1879) satisfied the conditions of the Code of Nomenclature for valid publication. By the time of his work, however, the plants Baillon classified in Uragoga already had previously and validly published genus names so his name Uragoga is an illegitimate superfluous name. This means the infrageneric and species names published in Uragoga from Baillon's 1879 article on are valid and can be basionyms for combinations in other genera, but these names are not nomenclaturally corrrect and cannot be used because Uragoga is not the correct name for the genus.
Baillon's taxonomy differed from previous works in regarding the genera Psychotria and Cephaelis as not distinct from each other. He combined these, and used the name Uragoga for this overall group. Baillon's morphological observations concluded that the distinction between these, branched vs. capitate inflorescences, did not actually exist. Inflorescence arrrangement varies widely and continuously in this group of Rubiaceae, so many species have intermediate inflorescence forms that do not agree with either genus. Other authors also reached this conclusion (Petit, 1964; Steyermark, 1972), and our modern taxonomy of this group explicitly considers inflorescence form variable and homoplasious within lineages; see also the the project page here for Palicourea for discussion of this. Uragoga has been generally equated with Psychotria, but that is not accurate. Baillon equated Uragoga with the combination of Psychotria and Cephaelis, using the generic characters of his day. However, neither of the genera he treated corresponded to the circumscriptions of these today. Both of these were circumscribed and diagnosed more broadly in Baillon's time, to include species of what are now at least eight separate genera. Today, Psychotria is more narrrowly circumscribed; Cephaelis is a synonym of Palicourea; and Uragoga is a synonym of Carapichea. Several of these genera were first analyzed by Petit (1964), who also lectotypified Uragoga. His typification made the type of Uragoga the same as that of Carapichea (Taylor & Gereau, 2013).
Baillon named several dozen species in Uragoga, most (if not all) from New Caledonia. He outlined a broad circumscription of this genus but, as in many of his new generic classifications in various families, he did not publish the corresponding combinations for the species he included. Not long after this, Kuntze also accepted Uragoga and its broad circumscription, and he did make the nomenclatural transfers in Uragoga for all the species he included: basically all of Psychotria, Palicourea, Rudgea, Carapichea, Eumachia, Notopleura, and some other genera. He named very few new species, but he did provide replacement names for a number of species with the same epithet. For more details about Kuntze's Rubiaceae names, see the Nomenclature Notes page on the Rubiaceae project home page. The name Uragoga was also used by several other authors in the late 19th and early 20th century, mostly for plants from the Pacific region. Most of the species with incorrect names in Uragoga have now been transferred to other genera (e.g., Barrabé et al. 2013; Steyermark, 1972); those not yet transferred have not been studied taxonomically since Baillon described them.
The Uragoga names listed below are mainly Neotropical. Several of these Psychotria species probably belong to Palicourea or a related genus, and will eventually be transferred out of Psychotria. They are provisionally treated here in Psychotria because they have not been studied taxonomically yet in the framework of our modern taxonomy of Palicoureeae. This list is not comprehensive for Neotropical Uragoga species.
1878 or 1879?
More recently Turner (2019: 57) has attempted, for reasons that are not entirely clear, to push back by a year from previous authors the valid publication of Uragoga, still as an illegitimate name. He did not discuss or reconcile any of the resulting nomenclatural changes this will generate. Turner noted that while Baillon's main presentation of Uragoga (1879: 323-353, 20 Aug 1879) had the elements needed to validate it, Baillon first mentioned this genus earlier, in 1878 (p. 223, sub Uragoga pancheri, 20 Nov 1878), in parentheses in a discussion comment that equated this with either Cephaelis or with Psychotria plus Cephaelis. [TL2 stated that no dates were available for internal fascicles of this volume of Adansonia, but in fact, as Turner notes, the volume was issue in fascicles of 32 pages and the date is given on the bottom of first page of each fascicle; the corresponding dates here are on pp. 161, 192, 225, and 321.] In his 1878 article, Baillon described several new species of Uragoga from New Calendonia but did not intend to describe Uragoga as a new genus because he thought it was already validly published. Baillon's comment here was about the morphology of Uragoga pancheri. Baillon commented that this inflorescence morphology was intermediate between several genera and made this species difficult to classify to genus, because the inflorescence arrangement is similar to "Tapogomea (s. Cephaelis)", and also a link between Psychotria and Cephaelis. Accepting Uragoga as published here would validate the names of what Turner counts as 41 infrageneric groups and species in Uragoga, mostly from New Caledonia.
Turner's nomenclatural argument seems problematic, however, because:
1. Baillon clearly did not intend to describe or characterize this genus here, and provided no diagnostic or explanatory information for Uragoga in his comment, so this interprets his work as accidental and different from his intent;
2. the references here to previously published genera, and thus to their descriptions, do not include mention of the authorship of these genera, here or elsewhere in this article, so they do not constitute a valid indirect citation under Art. 38.14;
3. the references to previously published descriptions are also ambiguous and thus not adequate to clarify the identity of Uragoga: most readers interpret this as listing Cephaelis as a synonym of Uragoga, but as noted by Turner himself (2019: 57) Baillon meant both genera together but that is only clear based on his subsequent, descriptive article, not from the information presented here;
4. and without these other elements, Uragoga is only described here by listing taxa that it includes and that is not adequate for valid publication (Art. 36.2).
Turner's stated goal here is to give valid status to some 41 Uragoga species and sections described by Baillon before 1879, so those names can be basionyms for their legitimate names in Psychotria. His stated goal is that "all the 41 species names and various sectional names published by Baillon in Uragoga before August 1879 are valid (ICN Art. 55) and the currently used names for these taxa do not need to be changed in any way". This argument is inaccurate, however, because none of these names is legitimate and so none of them is correct, so all of them must be changed before they can be used. These Uragoga names have most or all been treated in Psychotria now, with their names in this genus based on Baillon's descriptions and considered new or replacement names rather than combinations. Thus, the net result of Turner's proposal here would be to change the names in Psychotria of Baillons's species to combinations based on his valid basionyms instead of valid, legitimate new replacment names based on previously published descriptions: this does in fact require changing all of these, and extensive additional work will be needed to revise the authorship of and places of publication for Baillon's names and then change the later names based on them to combinations, and then to update floras and checklists, and also to explain and justify future discrepencies with numerous publications; and all this work will lack any actual taxonomic impact.
In his argument Turner cited Uragoga as a nomenclatural synonym of Psychotria and Uragoga's type as Psychotria asiatica, but this is inaccurate. Turner noted himself that if the 1878 date is used, Uragoga was then equated by Baillon with both Psychotria and Cephaelis, which have different types and are not today considered synonyms, so it is not clear that the type of Uragoga must be the type of Psychotria rather than a species of Cephaelis. The type species of Uragoga was so unclear to so many authors for so long, in fact, that Petit (1964) lectotypified the genus on Uragoga ipecacuannha.This lectotypification was apparently overlooked by Turner due to limited research on this name, because Turner provides no mention of this lectotypification or argument to overturn it. Therefore, Turner's proposal to change the date and place of publication of Uragoga seems incompletely analyzed, nomenclaturally unsupportable, and based on partially inaccurate information, and it is not taken up here.
Authors: C.M. Taylor & Roy E. Gereau
The content of this web page was last revised on 13 December 2019.
Taylor web page: http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/Research/curators/taylor.shtml