Justicia thyrsiformis

Turner, Ian M., 2015, The botanical legacy of Thomas Hardwicke’s journey to Srinagar in 1796, European Journal of Taxonomy 108, pp. 1-25 : 3

Justicia thyrsiformis

Hardwicke described this plant, ascribing the name to Roxburgh. Though Roxburgh (in litt.) actually suggested ‘thyrsiformis’ as the epithet, he used ‘thyrsiflora’ in Flora Indica, and appears to have corrected Hardwicke in a pencil annotation on the relevant drawings in the Plants of India (Vol. V nos. 71 and 72). I can confirm the observation by Mabberley (1980) that there are no Hardwicke specimens of this species in the BM or K herbaria. I therefore designate the Hardwicke drawing in the Natural History Museum Botany Library as lectotype. I prefer to choose this over the British Library copies as the Natural History Museum set are individually mounted and accompanied by Hardwicke’s manuscript descriptions.