Sibbaldianthe moorcroftii (Wall. ex Lehm.) Mosyakin & Shiyan, 2017

Mosyakin, Sergei L. & Shiyan, Natalia M., 2017, The genus Sibbaldianthe (Rosaceae): a nomenclatural overview and new combinations, Phytotaxa 296 (2), pp. 101-117 : 108-110

5. Sibbaldianthe moorcroftii (Wall. ex Lehm.) Mosyakin & Shiyan , comb. nov.

Basionym: Potentilla moorcroftii Wallich ex Lehmann (1831: 29) [≡ Potentilla moorcroftii Wallich (1829: no. 1014), nom. inval., nom. nudum].

≡ Potentilla bifurca L. var. moorcroftii (Wall. ex Lehm.) Th. Wolf (1908: 64) ≡ Schistophyllidium moorcroftii (Wall. ex Lehm.) Ikonnikov (1979: 210) ≡ Potentilla bifurca L. subsp. moorcroftii (Wall. ex Lehm.) Soják ex Panigrahi (1991: 12) .

Type (lectotype, designated by Soják 1996: 113):— INDIA: [Jammu and Kashmir, Ladakh, collected by W. Moorcroft] 1014 [number written by Wallich], PR378042 ( PR, Lehmann herbarium). Isolectotype: “Ladak [Ladakh], b. Gul. Moorcroft” ; Potentilla moorcroftii Wall. in Herb. 1824 ( K001110609 , K, image available from JSTOR Global Plants: http://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap. specimen.k001110609) .

Heterotypic synonyms:

Potentilla bidens Bertoloni (1863: 16 , tab. 4).

Type (lectotype, here designated):— INDIA: [Himachal Pradesh], “[illegible] above Kibar. 06-09-1847. T. Thomson” ( K000762544 ; K, image available from JSTOR Global Plants http://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.specimen.k000762544, where this specimen is annotated as “ Holotype of Potentilla bidens Bertol. ”, with label information “[Heyndo] above Ribas. 06-09-1847. T. Thomson s.n.”). According to the protologue: “Ex Thibeto in regione alpina ad altitudinem 10–15. mill. ped.”

Potentilla glauca Cambessedes (1841 ? separate issue; 1844: 54, t. 66, bound volume), nom. illeg., non P. glauca Moris (1827: 18) .

Type:— INDIA: [probably Uttarakhand] Jacquemont 1679 (original material in K — K000762545 ; MPU — MPU027215 ; PR — PR377972 , and probably in P). According to the protologue: “Inter lapides mobiles propè jugum Hangrang-Ghauti in provincià Kanaor. Alt. circer 4000 m. Floret Augusto.” Lectotype not designated.

Potentilla bifurca L. γ [var.] glaucescens Lehmann (1851a: 33 ; replacement name for P. glauca Cambess. , non Moris).

Type (lectotype, here designated):— INDIA: [probably Uttarakhand] Jacquemont 1679 ( PR377972 ; see Soják 1996: 108) .

The authorship of P. moorcroftii was often attributed to Wallich (1829), but in 1829 it was published invalidly. It first appeared without a description (nomen nudum) in the lithographed Wallich’s manuscript; bibliographic details and publication history are available from Stafleu & Cowan (1988), IPNI (2016 –onward), and Prakash (2016). The name was validated by Lehmann (1831), with a full Latin description and the reference to Wallich. We found information on two original specimens collected by William [Latinized form: Gulielmus or Guilelmus] Moorcroft, in PR (lectotype, Lehmann herbarium) and K (isolectotype). Specimens of other taxa from the Wallich collection are present in several other herbaria (including KW), so the existence of additional duplicates cannot be excluded.

Potentilla bidens seems to be identical with S. moorcroftii . Panigrahi (1991) provided the following type information: “ Type: Tibet, alpine regions, 3050–5185 m, sine lect., s. n. (BOLO—destroyed during World War II, vide Curator of BOLO dated 27. 1. 1981, in litt.).” In fact, Panigrahi (1991) cited not an actual specimen but the information from the protologue (“Ex Thibeto in regione alpina ad altitudinem 10–15. mill. ped.”: Bertoloni 1863: 16) translated into English, with a simply mechanical conversion of elevation data from feet into meters. Moreover, any citation of a lost or destroyed specimen cannot be regarded as a valid lectotypification. An image of one specimen from K is available from JSTOR Global Plants (see the link above); this specimen is annotated as the “ holotype ” of P. bidens and its characters correspond to those of S. moorcroftii . The image and description provided by Bertoloni (1863) are also quite recognizable. In the protologue Bertoloni indirectly cited collections of Th. Thomson. In the account of his journey, Thomson (1852: 132) wrote just before the “7 th of September” date entry: “The rose, the common Rhamnus of Piti, a little shrubby Potentilla , a spinous Astragalus , and several Artemisia , were the common shrubs, and two species of rhubarb grew abundantly on the dry hills above Kibar.” Most probably “Ribas” cited in the JSTOR Global Plants database is a misspelling of Kibar (Kibber), a village in Himachal Pradesh, India. The dates in Thomson’s book and on the label also match well, so we can assume that the specimen preserved in K is a duplicate of the specimen or specimens used by Bertoloni, and thus part of the original material (as defined by Art. 9.3 of ICN) of P. bidens . The images of two plants on Table 4 in Bertoloni’s publication are also parts of original material. However, we prefer to select as the lectotype the herbarium specimen rather than an image that contains less information about the plant.

Judging from the original description and illustration, and also from images of original specimens available online, Potentilla glauca Cambess. (non Moris) most probably also belongs here. We checked the images of the following specimens: (1) K, K000762545 (on sheet with other taxa: K000762546, K000762548, K000762547), image available from JSTOR Global Plants http://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.specimen.k000762545, where this specimen is annotated as “ Isotype of Potentilla glauca Cambess. ”; (2) MPU, MPU027215; image available from JSTOR Global Plants http://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.specimen.mpu027215, where this specimen is annotated as “Type? of Potentilla glauca Cambess. ”, and from MPU https://herbier.umontpellier.fr/zoomify/zoomify. php?fichier=MPU027215, where this specimen is listed as “Type probable de Potentilla glauca Cambess. ”. The plants were collected by Jacquemont in Kumaon District, Uttarakhand, India; see also Panigrahi (1991), who reported that the type is in P. We were unable to locate the specimen in the online database of the Paris herbarium. In any case, this issue is nomenclaturally irrelevant because the name proposed by Cambessedes (1844) is illegitimate.

Soják (1996: 108) reported the presence of an additional original specimen of Potentilla glauca in the Lehmann herbarium at PR, with the note “Type status unknown” and Soják’s identification [“ P. moorcroftii Wall. ex Lehm. ”]. This specimen is selected here as the lectotype of the valid and legitimate name P. bifurca var. glaucescens .

The geographic distribution of this mountain species is obscured by its confusion with other taxa of the S. bifurca group. Judging from characters of its pubescence, this taxon is closely related to S. orientalis . Soják, who changed his opinion on the taxonomic status and rank of members of the “ Potentilla bifurca group” several times, in one of his articles ( Soják 2007) placed P. orientalis in synonymy of P. moorcroftii and reported the latter (including “ P. bifurca subsp. orientalis [Juz.] Soják”) in China for “the extensive area from Xizang and Xinjiang across Gansu, Nei Mongol, Shaanxi, Shanxi, and Hebei to NE China ”; however, the geographical range that he indicated refers to both Sibbaldianthe moorcroftii and S. orientalis (in the circumscriptions accepted in our present article). Later Soják (2012) confirmed his opinion and included Potentilla moorcroftii (and all combinations based on that name) in synonymy of Schistophyllidium bifurcum subsp. orientale (see also our comments below, under Sibbaldianthe orientalis ).

Sibbaldianthe moorcroftii is indeed closely related to S. orientalis but differs from the latter mainly in having larger flowers (often solitary or in a few-flowered inflorescences) and leaflets more obovate or roundish in outline, often entire on the top (except the uppermost ones). It should be also taken into consideration that the hexaploid chromosome number (n= 21, 2n =42) was reported for plants of the P. bifurca aggregate by Kumar & Singhal (2011) from the area from where the type of P. bidens originated (cold mountain deserts of Lahul and Spiti District, Himachal Pradesh, India); most probably these records refer to S. moorcroftii . Because of that we prefer at present to treat this taxon as a separate species.

Sibbaldianthe moorcroftii sensu stricto was reported (usually as Potentilla moorcroftii ) mainly from highmountain areas in India, western China, some republics of Central Asia ( Lehmann 1856; Juzepczuk 1941; Kashchenko 1957; Ikonnikov 1979; Czerepanov 1995; Lazkov & Sultanova 2014 etc.), and probably Mongolia ( Grubov 1982). Mongolian records need confirmation because Gubanov (1996) stated that reports of Potentilla moorcroftii from the Mongolian Altai probably belong to P. orientalis .