When originally established in 1828 with a distinct diagnosis and three listed species, Taeniopteris was a nomenclaturally superfluous illegitimate name, as it included the type of the previously and validly published monotypic fossil generic name Marantoidea Jaeger, M. arenacea Jaeger (Pfl.-Versteiner.: 28, t. 5, fig. 5. 15–22 Sep 1827). It is unclear why Brongniart overlooked the fact that he included a previously established monotypic genus in his newly formed one, recognizing it as a merely variety of his new species, T. vittata var. major Brongn. (l.c.: 194. 1828), making both Taeniopteris and T. vittata superfluous and illegitimate. Later Brongniart (Hist. Vég. Foss. 1: 362. 28 Mar 1836) designated T. vittata as type of Taeniopteris (although his action was meaningless as the type of Taeniopteris is that of Marantoidea), his new choice (again repeated by Miller, N. Amer. Geol. Palaeontol.: 146. 1889) was overlooked by subsequent palaeobotanists. Under modern rules of nomenclature, to maintain T. vittata as type of Taeniopteris as is currently applied is possible by two conservation proposals, that of Taeniopteris with T. vittata as type, but also that of T. vittata itself with a conserved type; see formal proposals by Doweld (in TAXON 62 (6) • (2249–2250) Conserve Taeniopteris and T. vittata December 2013: 1348–1349).
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