Parnassia wightiana Wallich ex Wight & Arnott (1834: 35)

Shu, Yumin, Yu, Huiying, Mu, Xianyun & Zhang, Zhixiang, 2017, Checklist and typification of Parnassia (Celastraceae), Phytotaxa 309 (1), pp. 1-22 : 6

Parnassia wightiana Wallich ex Wight & Arnott (1834: 35)

TYPE:— INDIA. Wight 116 (lectotype designated here: K000739468 ; isolectotypes: E00174108 , E00174109 , E00174110 , K000739464 , GZU000100142 , P00709377 )

= Parnassia ornata Wallich ex Wight & Arnott (1834: 35) ≡ Parnassia wightiana var. ornata (Wallich ex Wight & Arnott) Drude (1875: 315)

TYPE:— INDIA. Wallich Catalogue n. 1247 (lectotype designated here: K001112512 ; isolectotypes: BM000947004 , BM000600011 , E00174105 , E00174106 , E00174107 , GZU000100104 , K000739462 , K000739463 , L0281539 , NY00186148 , P00709374 , P00709375 , P00709376 )

= Parnassia schmidii Zenker (1835: 3)

TYPE:— INDIA. Blue Mountain, Utacamund. Schmid s.n. (holotype: JE n.v.)

= Parnassia nana Griffith (1854: 427)

TYPE:— AFGHANISTAN. Khasyah mountains, 5 November 1835, Bogapani s.n. (holotype: not located)

= Parnassia wightiana var. brachyloba Franchet (1897: 259)

TYPE:— CHINA. Chongqing, Chengkou, Touan-tchen, Ta-lin-hien, 2500 m, 8 August 1896, Farges 1375 (lectotype designated here: P00709371 ; isolectotypes: P00709372 , P00709373 , P05556418 , KUN1230259 )

= Parnassia wightiana var. flavida Franchet (1897: 259)

TYPE:— CHINA. Chongqing, Chengkou, Touan-tchen, Ta-lin-hien, August 1896, Farges s.n. (lectotype designated here: P 06392732) = Parnassia yiliangensis T.C. Ku (1987: 48)

TYPE:— CHINA. Yunnan, Yiliang , 1850 m, 13 September 1972, Orientaliboreali-yunnan Exped. 597 (holotype: PE01863976 ; isotype: KUN0437594 )

= Parnassia simaoensis Y. Y. Qian (1997: 305)

TYPE:— CHINA. Yunnan, Simao , 1400 m, 21 October 1987, Y. Y. Qian 1461 (holotype: NEFI n.v.; isotype: KUN1216621 )

Notes: Parnassia wightiana and P. ornata are based on manuscript names published by Wallich (1829) in his Numerical List without descriptions. Wight & Arnott (1834) provided the description of P. wightiana and cited two syntypes, Wallich Cat. n. 3755 and Wight 116, hence validating this name. We selected a completed and well-presented specimen K 000739468 (mounted with K 000739467 on one sheet, but belonging to different gatherings) as the lectotype of P. wightiana .

Some researchers ( Ku, 1987; Chuang, 2006; Adhikari & Akiyama, 2011) thought that P. ornata was formally described by Arnott (1837), while Nerkrassova (1927) noticed that this name had been validly published in the note of P. wightiana by Wight & Arnott (1834). In the protologue, they compared P. wightiana with P. ornata and stated: ‘ Perhaps this and P. ornata, Wall. ! L. n. 1247, may prove the same: in the latter, the petals have a much longer unguis which is nearly linear, and the lower part of their margin is cut into numerous pinnatifid segments, the divisions of which are long and capillary ’. This description meets Art. 38 of ICN, makes the name P. ornata validated, hence the correct author citation of it should be ‘Wallich ex Wight & Arnott’. Fourteen sheets of Wallich Catalogue n. 1247 have been found in herbaria BM, E, GZU, K, L, NY and P, and here we designated K 001112512 as the lectotype.

One collection, Farges 1375, from Chongqing was separated into Farges 1375 and Farges 1375bis. Based on these, two varieties of P. wightiana , namely, var. brachyloba and var. flavida were described. Five specimens of Farges 1375 were traced from P and KUN. Among them, a well-presented one ( P 00709362) with a note about the collection information in Farges’ hand was selected as the lectotype of var. brachyloba . No specimens of Farges 1375bis have been found, but a specimen with barcode P 06392732 collected by Farges from Chongqing, had a label with a penciled note by Franchet: ‘ Parnassia wightiana Wall. v. flavida Franch. p. 259, B. Soc. B. Fr. 1897 ’. That means this sheet was studied by Franchet when he described this variety in 1897, it belongs to the original material, thus we selected it as the lectotype of var. flavida .

Sect. Fimbripetalum Drude (1875: 302)

Type: Parnassia foliosa Hooker & Thomson (1858: 79)

=Ser. Amoenae T. C. Ku (1987: 51)

Type: Parnassia amoena Diels (1900: 370)

=Ser. Rhombipetalae T. C. Ku (1993: 276)

Type: Parnassia rhombipetala B.L. Chai (1991: 374)