Nomenclature and the National Wetland Plant List

Abstract : The National Wetland Plant List (NWPL) is being revised by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, and the Natural Resources Conservation Service. This Technical Note describes how changes in botanical nomenclature are being handled in the 2009 revision of the NWPL. The current list used for delineation purposes is the 1988 list (referred to here as the 88 list) (Reed 1988), which had undergone an update in 1996 (referred to as the 96 list, as posted in a USFWS draft Web publication) (Reed 1998) but was never finalized. In preparation of the new version of the NWPL, we found it necessary to combine the efforts of the 88 and 96 lists into a single list and then bring the combined list into nomenclatural and taxonomic conformity with the most recent taxonomic standards, including the most recent International Code of Botanical Nomenclature (International Association for Plant Taxonomy 2007). Thousands of additional plants have been incorporated into the new version, some of which are newly described taxa while others are wetland plants that had been overlooked in the previous lists. Furthermore, changes and reclassification in certain groups, especially in families such as Asteraceae and Poaceae, have been extensive. Because the 1988 NWPL was and still remains the only wetland plant list validated by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers for wetland delineations, the current NWPL must track and incorporate all nomenclatural changes from both 1988 and 1996 into the 2009 list. In concert with the changes of taxonomy and nomenclature, the corresponding wetland ratings that applied to all 1988 and 1996 NWPL names had to be linked to the 2009 NWPL. Furthermore, because the 2009 NWPL will be used as part of the federal methodology for delineating wetland boundaries and establishing limits of jurisdiction under the Clean Water Act, the current list must track all former wetland plants and their respective rat