Three modern protologues of names of new plant taxa: Zyrphelis ecklonis subsp. oligocephala Zinnecker and Zyrphelis ecklonis subsp. strictifolia Zinnecker, from a paper in volume 60 of the journal Taxon by Ortiz & Zinnecker-Wiegand (2011: 1196), and Merianthera bullata R. Goldenb., Fraga & A.P. Fontana, from a paper in volume 61 of Taxon by Goldenberg & al. (2012: 1047). Reproduced by permission of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy. Components of the protologues are as follows: Names cited in full (generic name not abbreviated), authorship explicitly cited, and novel status indicated (“subsp. nov.” or “sp. nov.”); all three items are best practice and should certainly be followed (even if strictly they are not requirements for valid publication under the Code).Latin validating description or diagnosis for the names in Zyrphelis (here diagnoses), as required for names published between 1935 and 2011, inclusive (Art. 39.1).Latin or English validating description or diagnosis for Merianthera bullata (here an English description), as required for names published from 2012 onward (Art. 39.2).Citation of type (Art. 40.1), which is a specimen (Art. 40.4), using one of the words “typus” or “holotypus”, or its abbreviation, or its modern-language equivalent (here both words in Latin or English; Art. 40.6), specifying the single herbarium where the type is conserved (BOL, S, or MBML; Art. 40.7), and citing a duplicate, i.e. an isotype, in the herbarium UPCB. The exclamation mark (!) placed after the herbarium code in the Zyrphelis protologues indicates that the cited specimen has been seen by the author(s). No meaning should be inferred from the absence of exclamation marks in the Merianthera protologue because the authors did not use exclamation marks at all in their paper.