COLOR STANDARDS - A REVIEW AND EVALUATION IN RELATION TO PENICILLIUM TAXONOMY

Comparison of Munsell notations for colours in five copies of the atla s by Ridgway (1912) has revealed a remarkable overall consistency in h ue. Variation among the copies was less than one Munsell hue (2.5 % of the spectrum) in 83 % of the 1140 comparisons and exceeded two Munsel l hues in only eight of the comparisons of each record with every othe r record for the given colour. One hundred of the 136 colours examined were low chroma colours in four yellow-green through blue-green hues. The other compared colours, in 36 different hues, were high chroma (u ngreyed), midvalue members. An unexpected finding, in a cursory examin ation of the second edition of the Methuen Handbook of Colour, was dis covery of edition-related discrepancies in hue for several colours. Th e acceptable manuals for finely-drawn distinctions in hue, value and c hroma (1000-1500 colours) are the Munsell Book of Color and Color Stan dards and Color Nomenclature by Robert Ridgway. Notations for equivale nt colours in the Munsell and Methuen (third edition) systems are tabu lated for 64 Ridgway colours: midvalue-high chroma representatives of the 36 hues and 28 yellow-green through blue-green colours which are c ommon conidial colours in Penicillium.