- 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 withcultigen 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 undercultigen ).ee also
*
cultigen
* alien (biology)
*native *
naturalised References
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