[1] The preparation for this venture was made by Benjamin Daydon Jackson of the Linnaean Society, directed by Joseph Dalton Hooker at Kew.
[2] In providing citations of plant names, the starting point was taken from 1753 onward; the year of publication for the Species Plantarum of Linnaeus.
[4] The scope of the project was also changed in early editions, the editor noting that to include a full synonymy was too ambitious.
The work originally indicated acceptance of a name, acting as a nomenclator rather than an index, but by 1913 it avoided making taxonomic judgement in its citations.
The integrity of the document was liable to criticism as only representing the 'Kew view' on nomenclatural validity, the objective task of indexing gave the work itself greater international acceptance.
"First published in 1893,[6] a hard copy was reprinted in 1996, providing access to the original publication details of plant names; these were also made available in microfiche format as the Cumulated Index Kewensis.