Cneoridium Dumosum (Nuttall) Hooker F. Collected March 26, 1960, At An Elevation Of About 1450 Meters On Cerro Quemazón, 15 Miles South Of Bahía De Los Angeles, Baja California, México, Apparently For A Southeastward Range Extension Of Some 140 Miles
Contents
The paper is about the plant species Cneoridium dumosum.
Bookended by its lengthy, pangrammatic title, containing all of Moran's key points, and its copious acknowledgements, the full text of the article body is:
I got it there then (8068).
comprising just five words, the parenthetical reference number of the specimen collected, and a period.
Moran's closing acknowledgement:
Last but not least, I cannot fail to mention my deep indebtedness to my parents, without whose early cooperation this work would never have been possible.
was also used by biologist George Yatskievych, duly cited, in 1982.
In an obituary to Moran, published by The San Diego Union-Tribune, fellow botanist Tom Oberbauer noted that Moran "had a dry sense of humor".
Publishing
The paper was published in 1962 in volume 16, page 272, of the California Botanical Society's journal Madroño. The entire paper was republished under the heading "Reprinted Classic Madroño Articles" in Madroño, volume 60, p. 359 in 2013, the California Botanical Society's centennial year.
The paper is not the shortest ever published. John H. Conway and Alexander Soifer's 2003 paper "Can n+ 1 unit equilateral triangles cover an equilateral triangle of side > n, say n + ε?" contains just two words, "n+2 can", followed by two figures. Even shorter is “Chemiefreie Haushaltsprodukte” (German for "chemical-free household products"), which purports to be a list of all "truly" chemical-free products and has zero words beyond the abstract.