How to Deal with Nomenclatoral Ambiguities of Trivial Names for Natural Products? – A Clarifying Case Study Exemplified for “Corymbosin”

Abstract

Many names of plant secondary compounds that have been isolated and identified in the course of phytochemical investigations are based either on the vernacular or Latin names of the source plants, are constructed according to rules of chemical nomenclature, or consist of in-between forms. Trivial names, based on the specific epithets of biological organisms, occasionally create confusion because such epithets are used in numerous combinations and, therefore, could potentially be used when naming chemical entities from radically different sources. Such an example of ambiguous naming is represented with the case of corymbosin, a name that was assigned to two chemically distinct compounds that were isolated and reported simultaneously in 1967 from two different spermatophyte taxa: a terpene glucoside from Turbina corymbosa and a flavone from Webera corymbosa. The flavone is more widespread and has been reported so far from 15 taxa, whereas the glucoside has thus far only been isolated from the original source species. Furthermore, glycosides named corymbosins K1-K4 were isolated in 2006 from Knoxia corymbosa. This article emphasizes the need to adhere to strict principles when naming secondary constituents and suggests that a practice should be applied that is similar to the application of the priority rules used in botanical nomenclature for homonyms. The use of the trivial name, corymbosin, should be applied only to the more widespread tricetin-7,3′,4′,5′-tetramethyl ether by rules of conservation.