Rhynchosia aurea ( Willdenow 1803: 218 ) Candolle (1825: 386)

Mishra, Ajay K., Hurrah, Imtiyaz A., Dhole, Pankaj A. & Wagh, Vijay V., 2021, Lectotypification of Glycine aurea, the basionym of Rhynchosia aurea (Fabaceaee), Phytotaxa 528 (1), pp. 62-64 : 62

Rhynchosia aurea ( Willdenow 1803: 218) Candolle (1825: 386) .

≡ Glycine aurea Willdenow (1803: 218)

≡ Nomismia aurea (Willdenow) Wight & Arnott (1834: 237)

Lectotype (designated here):— INDIA, Tamil Nadu, Tranquebar s.d., J.P. Rottler s.n. (JE barcode JE00002174 [digital image!]; isolectotype S barcode S12-9624 [digital image!].

Notes: — Willdenow (1803) while describing the Glycine aurea , did not provide any detail about collection number and herbarium where the specimens are housed, nor did Candolle (1825). The only clue available is that the specimens were collected by Rottler and place of collection was Tranquebar ( Rottler 1803; Matthew 1993). We traced two specimens collected by Rottler at JE and S which qualify as syntypes, according to Art. 9.6 ( Turland et al. 2018). The specimen at JE bears a label with annotation Hedysarum aureum Koenig , Nomismia aurea Wight & Arnott , collector name i.e. Rottler and place of collection i.e. Tranquebar. On the other hand the specimen housed at S also bears label with same annotation and collector name but lacking place of collection, instead of that mentioned Ind. Orient. The best preserved specimen, i.e. JE00002774 is designated here as the lectotype ( Fig. 1 ) while S12-9624 becomes isolectotype.

There seems clear disagreement among different world plant name databases ( Roskov et al. 2020; IPNI 2021; POWO 2021; Tropicos 2021; The Plant List 2013) regarding the basionym of Rhynchosia aurea . Such errors are common with most of the Rottler’s and Willdenow’s given names. Often the names validated by Willdenow (1803) were attributed to Rottler and vice versa, possibly because Rottler’s paper was published along with remarks given by Willdenow as footnotes to Rottler’s text. Most among these database (Plants of the World Online ( POWO 2021), Catalogue of life ( Roskov et al. 2020), The Plant List (2013) cite Willdenow as earlier author of the specific epithet aurea i.e. accepting Glycine aurea as the basionym of Rhynchosia aurea , which rationally should be adopted unanimously. Other sources such as International Plant Names Index ( IPNI 2021) and Tropicos (2021) however cite Rottler as the earlier author, as such considering Hedysarum aureum Rottler (1803: 218) as the basionym of Rhynchosia aurea erroneously. Inorder to avoid this confusion one must be aware of the fact that Willdenow has either provided a slightly altered diagnoses for some of the new species described in the text by Rottler or sometimes contrasted a species described by Rottler and in all validated 21 names of the species ( Daniel 1991). Glycine aurea was one among those 21 names validly published by Willdenow in Rottler’s paper and is therefore reasonably the basionym of Rhynchosia aurea , not Hedysarum aureum that was invalidly published by Rottler in his own paper of 1803 ( Daniel 1991).

Figures

FIGURE 1. Lectotype of Glycine aurea Willdenow (JE00002174)© Friedrich Schiller University Jena, Germany.