Brodiaea coronaria

The history of the scientific name of this species is somewhat tangled. The plant was first collected by Archibald Menzies during the Vancouver Expedition, and published as Hookera coronaria by Richard Salisbury in Paradisus Londinensis early in 1808.[5] However, Salisbury had fallen out with fellow botanist James Edward Smith. Smith first published a moss genus, Hookeria, and then published a description of Salisbury's Hookera coronaria as Brodiaea grandiflora.[6]

If it was Smith's intention to replace Salisbury's name, as has been suggested,[6] it was partly successful, since although Salisbury's Hookera coronaria has priority over Smith's Brodiaea grandiflora, names as similar as Hookera and Hookeria are considered to be confusing and a formal proposal to conserve the names Brodiaea and Hookeria over the name Hookera was accepted.[7] However, Salisbury's epithet coronaria still stands since Smith's Brodiaea grandiflora is now considered to have been an illegitimate name when published. In 1917, after the Kew Rule had vanished from botanical nomenclature, Willis Jepson formally published the combination Brodiaea coronaria, now accepted as the botanical name for this species.[1]

Synonyms, in full or in part, include:[8]

There are two subspecies of this plant:

• Brodiaea coronaria subsp. coronaria – crown brodiaea[9]
• Brodiaea coronaria subsp. rosea – Indian Valley brodiaea; a rare pink-flowered subspecies endemic to a small region in the Inner North California Coast Ranges (Tehama, Glenn, and Lake Counties) in northwestern California.[10][11]

At the center of the flower are three stamens and whitish sterile stamens or staminodes (Anacortes, Washington).