| 🌵 Author(s) | Joseph Nelson RoseNathaniel Lord Britton |
| 🌵 Type | Toumeya papyracantha |
Toumey + Latin -a, the recommended suffix to form plant genus names from personal names that end with a vowel other than a (Rec. 60B.1(a), International Code of Nomenclature). Named for American botanist James William Toumey (1865-1932), dean of Yale’s School of Forestry, “whose studies and collections of cacti have greatly aided our investigations”.
This name is considered a younger homonym of the algal genus Tuomeya Harv. (1858):
Committee recommendation: 11 vote to treat them as homonyms, 3 vote not to do so. Tuomeya was listed in NCU-3 and so is presumed to be in current use for the alga. Toumeya […] is usually regarded as a synonym of Sclerocactus and is not included as a current name in NCU-3 […]. Despite the fact that the two genera concerned are in different major groups, a majority of the committee find the names so confusing that they would treat them as homonyms. In fact, in the committee’s discussion the two names became inadvertently transposed at least once.
Spermatophyta Committee, Taxon 53(3): 824. 2004
Maarten H.J. van der Meer (2023 Jul 16). Toumeya. Dictionary of Cactus Names. Retrieved from https://www.cactusnames.org/toumeya