Millettia rubiginosa Wight & Arnott (1834: 263)

Balan, Anoop Puthuparampil, Predeep, Sreevilas Vasudevan & Prakashkumar, Raveendran Pillai, 2021, Lectotypification of two names in Indian Millettia (Fabaceae-Papilionoideae), Phytotaxa 494 (2), pp. 225-230 : 227

Millettia rubiginosa Wight & Arnott (1834: 263) FIGURE 2 , A & B

Lectotype (designated here):— INDIA. Courtallum , s.d., Wight 912 (K000848706), digital image!; isolectotypes BR0000013459673, E00174560, E00174561, E00174562, E00174563, E00174564, K000848705, NY00026406, P 02141863, P 02141864 and P 02141865 (digital images!), MH! Accession no. 7863.

Distribution:— India, endemic (Kerala and Tamil Nadu).

Notes:— Wight & Arnott (1834) described Millettia rubiginosa based on the collections of Wight (Wight 912) from Courtallum in south India. Pertaining to the type specification provided in protologue, 13 specimens were traced in various herbaria across the globe. Robert Wight was an assistant surgeon and botanist in the service of East India Company in Madras and served as superintendent of Madras Botanic Garden during 1826–1828. He returned to England on a three-years furlough due to physical problems and spent most of this period in Edinburgh to work on his material for the Prodromus ( Basak 1981) . G.A.W. Arnott was a botanist and Professor of Botany in the University of Glasgow from 1845 to 1868. The specimens housed at E and K must have been used by the authors to describe M. rubiginosa . Of these, K000848706 is designated here as the lectotype as it agrees well with the protologue.

Figures

FIGURE 2. A. Habit and fruit of Millettia rubiginosa; B. Lectotype of M. rubiginosa (© the Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew); C. Habit and fruit of Millettia splendens; D. Lectotype of M. splendens (© the Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew).