Indigen

In general usage the word indigen is treated as a variant of the word indigene, meaning a native.

Usage in botany

However, it was used in a strictly botanical sense for the first time in 1918 by Liberty Hyde Bailey ((1858-1954) an American horticulturist, botanist and cofounder of the American Society for Horticultural Science) and described as a plant

" "of known habitat" " [Bailey, L.H. 1918. The indigen and the cultigen. "Science" ser. 2, 47:306-308.] .

Later, in 1923, Bailey formally defined the indigen as:

Botanical definition

" ... "a species of which we know the nativity, - one that is somewhere recorded as indigenous". "

The term was coined to contrast with cultigen which he defined in the 1923 paper as:

" ... "the species, or its equivalent, that has appeared under domestication, - the plant is cultigenous."

[ Bailey, L.H. 1923. Various cultigens, and transfers in nomenclature. "Gentes Herb". 1: 13-136.] The definition and usage of the word cultigen has undergone subsequent change (see entry under cultigen).

ee also

* cultigen
* alien (biology)
* native

* naturalised

References