Amaranthus mangostanus var. major Moquin-Tandon (1849: 262)

Iamonico, Duilio, 2016, Nomenclature survey of the genus Amaranthus (Amaranthaceae). 5. Moquin-Tandon’s names, Phytotaxa 273 (2), pp. 81-114 : 100

24. Amaranthus mangostanus var. major Moquin-Tandon (1849: 262)

Type (lectotype here designated):— INDIA. India Orientalis, 1819, Wallich s.n. (P00606397 [digital image!], image of the lectotype is available at http://dsiphoto.mnhn.fr/sonnerat/LAPI/scanL/L20080303/P00606397.jpg).

= Amaranthus tricolor Linnaeus (1753: 989) . Type (lectotype designated by Townsend 1974: 14):—ASIA. Habitat in India, Herb. Linn. No. 1117.7 (LINN [digital image!], image of the lectotype is available at http://linnean-online.org/11633/).

Nomenclatural notes:— Moquin-Tandon (1849: 277−278) described this variety providing only a short dagnosis (“caule gracili parce ramoso, foliis majoribus, glomerulis conformibus paucis remotiusculis”). In the Moquin-Tandon’s Herbarium at P there is one specimen (barcode 00606397) that bears one piece of the synflorescence plus a separate leaf, and two original labels reporting the annotations “ n° 544 Amaranthus oleraceus India Orientalis cl. Wallich 1819 ”, and “ Amaranthus mangostanus var. β major Prodr. 13, 2, p. 262 ”. The exsiccatum shows leaves with blade longer than those of the nominal variety [3.5−9.5 cm vs. 1.6−2.6 cm (“ folia 1½-2½ poll. longa (incl. petiolo 9–15 lin.)], so matching with the diagnosis (“ β major …foliis majoribus ”). I here designated the specimens P00606397 as the lectotype of the name Amaranthus mangostanus var. major .

Taxonomical notes:—The name Am. mangostanus is currently considered as an heterotypic synonym of Am. tricolor (see Iamonico 2014a). According to the current concept in Am. tricolor (see e.g., Bojian & al. 2003, Mosyakin & Robertson 2003, Iamonico 2015) the Moquin’s diagnostic characters for the var. major completely overlap with those of Am. tricolor , so I here propose a synonymization of the two names.