Kalanchoe aleurodes Stearn (1931a: 164)

Smith, Gideon F., 2022, Of paddles, soup plates, and clubs: the taxonomy of the southern and southtropical African Kalanchoe sect. Raveta (Crassulaceae subfam. Kalanchooideae; Kalanchoe subg. Kalanchoe) and its constituent species, Phytotaxa 568 (1), pp. 8-26 : 21

4.1 Kalanchoe aleurodes Stearn (1931a: 164) , nom. utique rej. prop.

Type:— ZIMBABWE [ Southern Rhodesia ]. About 27 km north of Harare [Salisbury], raised from seed collected by Mr S. G. Arden at or near the area or village Dombashawa [Domboshaw[v]a] in the province of Mashonaland East and cultivated in the Cambridge Botanic Garden [“ex Hort. Bot. Cantab.” ( Stearn 1931a: 164)], Stearn s.n. (holotype CGE, not seen [see discussion below]; isotype Herb. BM barcode BM000649720 !, specimen annotated as “co-type”) .

Notes on the type of the name K. aleurodes :—When publishing the name K. aleurodes, Stearn (1931a: 164) provided the following information only about the type: “ Typus in Herb. Univ. Cantab.”, i.e., that it is kept in the Cambridge University Herbarium (Herb. CGE). No responses have been received to enquiries about the existence, or to see an image, of this specimen at Herb. CGE, which on their website (https://www.museums.cam.ac.uk/research/ cambridge-university-herbarium) states that it is “…especially rich in ‘type’ specimens […] (numbering an estimated 50,000 individual specimens)”.

The “co-type” specimen—it is, in fact, an isotype—that Stearn kept in his personal herbarium is stamped “Herb. W. T. Stearn.” with the stamp prefixed by “ex” written in ink, so indicating that the material originated from Stearn. “Co-type” is an obsolete term no longer in use in plant nomenclature that generally meant syntype, but also paratype and isotype ( Hawksworth 2010: 55).

Additional information about the material that was used when the description was drawn up, and presumably preserved in Herb. CGE and in Stearn’s personal collection, now at Herb. BM, is provided by Tutin (1931: 9).