pseudogenus

Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia

1. n. In botany, a form-genus; a genus based upon apparent species which are really only stages in the life-cycle of species of other genera. Many of the so-called genera of fungi, bacteria, etc., are pseudo- or form-genera. See form-genus, and compare form-species.
2. n. In zoology, a spurious genus. Pseudogenera, or pseudogeneric names, may be due to the imagination, as when hypothetical or supposititious ancestral forms, of which nothing is actually known, are named as genera (see several cases among words beginning in Pro-, Proto-);