Reaping the harvest. Retrieval of names and identifications by means of identification and collection lists

Among past acquisitions of the larger herbaria there are frequently duplicate collections which at the time of the distribution of the sets were not or very inadequately named. Examples of some famous large collections which were handled this way are those of Beccari, Forbes, Sieber, Dietrich, Zenker and others. They were either unnamed or only provisionally named with pre-identifications in approximate degree of accuracy to family and sometimes to genus. As a matter of fact, this is for large collections still current procedure as it would create an impossible situation to have all such bulky collections shelved as a whole for some decades, or even many decades and postpone distribution of sets until all numbers are named by specialists. This would also be detrimental to progress of science: the earlier the sets are distributed the better because by ’coming into circulation’ they will attract attention which means research.