Tephrosia barberi Drummond (1918:320)

Krishnaraj, Moothedathu Venugopalan Nair & Mohanan, Narayanan Nair, 2017, Three lectotypifications in Tephrosia Pers. (Fabaceae), Phytotaxa 319 (2), pp. 197-199 : 197

Tephrosia barberi Drummond (1918:320) .

Lectotype (here designated):— South India. Kudiramalaiteri, Nazareth, 7 August 1899, C. A.Barber 630 ( K000848871 [digital photo!], isolectotype: MH00002030 [digital photo!]).

Note:—This species is named after Charles Alfred Barber, a British botanist, who was also an expert in sugarcane and worked much of his life in south India. Drummond (1918) described Tephrosia barberi in Gamble’s Flora of Presidency of Madras with a comment “a distinct looking undershrub with reddish flexuose branchlets and small obovate obtuse leaflets, softly villous”. The names of two collectors are cited in the protologue with their collection localities as “S. Carnatic at Kudiramalai Teri, Thinnavely (Barber) and Tuticorin (Wight)”. After a thorough search at various herbaria, we could not find a Tuticorin collection made by Wight, but we found duplicates of Barber 630at K and MH. Two specimens are pasted on the Kew herbarium sheet and both of them are fertile. Additionally, a complete dissection of floral parts with line drawings is also pasted on the top left corner. The herbarium sheet deposited at Madras Herbarium is also fertile, though poorly preserved. On both the type specimens, the exact collection locality of this taxon at Kudiramalai is written as ‘Nazareth’ but Thinnavelly [Thirunelvely-Tamil Nadu] is not mentioned. From this, it is indirectly evident that Drummond studied more than one specimen before establishing T. barberi . Here we select Barber 630(K000848871) at Kew herbarium,which includes dissected flowers and a drawing made by Drummond, as the lectotype. This species is endemic to Tamil Nadu, India.