Melastoma tetramerum Hayata (1913: 120)

Ohi-Toma, Tetsuo, Watanabe-Toma, Kana & Murata, Jin, 2015, Typification of Angiospermae described from the Bonin Islands 2: Archichlamydeae, Phytotaxa 227 (1), pp. 35-44 : 39

Melastoma tetramerum Hayata (1913: 120)

Type (lectotype, designated here):— JAPAN. Bonin: Chichijima, Hatsune-ura, 25 July 1905, H. Hattori s.n. ( TI [04105]!, isolectotype TI [04108]!).

Additional specimens examined:— JAPAN. Bonin: Chichijima, Hatsune, 25 July 1905, H. Hattori s.n. (syntypes, TI [04106]!, TI [04107]!, TI [04116]!, TI [04117]!).

Distribution:— Japan (endemic to Chichijima in the Bonin Islands).

Notes:— Hayata (1913) indicated “Hab. Bonin: Chichijima-Hatsunejima, Juli. 1905, leg H. Hattori.” Toyoda (1981) recognized the specimen (H. Hattori, 1905) in TI as the type. We found six sheets that were collected from Chichijima by H. Hattori on 25 July 1905. All of them are regarded as the original material based on Hayata’s handwriting of “ Melastoma tetramerum Hay. ” on the label. However, their localities are not “Hatsunejima” in the protologue but “Hatsune-ura” for two sheets and “Hatsune” for four sheets. The difference in the locality name is probably an error in the protologue. We regarded these original material as the syntypes, which contain duplicates from two different localities. On one (TI [04105]) of the two duplicates from “Hatsune-ura,” a comment of “Very distinct for it tetramerous flowers and its leaves which are much smaller than these of any species of the genus,” which was consistent with a sentence in the protologue, was written in Hayata’s handwriting. We designated the specimen with the comment as the lectotype (see Rec. 9A.3 of the ICN, McNeill et al. 2012) and its duplicates (TI [04108]) as the isolectotypes.