The 1st and 2nd characters of an Element code (ELCODE) for a vascular plant were based on group:
The 3rd through 5th characters were an abbreviation for the family to which that Element belonged. The abbreviation used was the first three letters of the family name as listed in the standard reference.
In nearly 90% of the cases, these letters produced a unique identifier. There were a number of situations, however, where family names were identical for the first three letters, thus producing a tie. These ties were resolved as follows: in general, if one of the tied families was likely to contain significantly more Elements than the other, then the first three letters were kept for that family and alternative letters assigned to the other(s) (compare Cornaceae [COR] with Cornynocarpaceae [CRN]). If the tie could not be resolved in this manner, neither family kept the first three letters and other letters were used to produce unique identifiers. The intent was to make these codes as easy to work with as possible.
A table indicating the ties that were resolved follows:
The last 5 characters in the Element code for a vascular plant were a sequentially generated numeric code, with the 6th and 7th values assigned to genus, and the 8th and 9th values used for species. The 10th character was a sequentially generated numeric code that identified the subspecies/variety; a zero (0) was used if the Element was a full species.
|
Character(s) |
Representation |
Range of Values |
|
6 - 7 |
Genus |
00 - 99 |
|
8 - 9 |
Species |
00 - 99 |
|
10 |
Subspecies/ Variety |
1 - 9 |
NOTE: In some cases, sequential number codes were used for characters 3 through 10 to provide unique Element codes for international Conservation Data Centres.