Chloris montana Roxburgh (1832: 329)

Landge, Shahid Nawaz & Shinde, Rajendra D., 2022, Lectotypification of Chloris montana (Poaceae: Chloridoideae) and taxonomic notes on a few species from India, Phytotaxa 550 (3), pp. 243-252 : 244

Chloris montana Roxburgh (1832: 329) .

Lectotype (hic designatus):—[Illustration] Roxburgh Icon (inedit.) No. 882 [ Figure 1 in the middle and its dissected spikelet on the lower left-hand-side], (https://archive.bsi.gov.in/botanical-details?link=549T3936 S79423 IX, CAL icon!) ( Fig. 1 ).

Notes on lectotypification:— Roxburgh (1832), for his new species Chloris montana , merely cited the locality as “This is a native of mountainous tracts only”; he neither cited nor indicated any collection or illustration. In order to typify the preceding species name, searches for the specimen(s) used by him were made in several herbaria, viz., A, B, BM, BR, C, E, G, K, FI, G, LIV, NY, OXF, P, PH, TCD, and UPS in which many of Roxburgh’s collections are housed ( Stapfleu & Cowan 1983, Robinson 2008). However, no suitable specimen was located. Alternatively, since Roxburgh’s Flora Indica drawings housed at CAL and K can serve as the original materials for the typification of Roxburgh species names, we looked for an appropriate uncited drawing. In this regard, we located Roxburgh’s icon No. 882 (inedit.) at CAL. The drawing of floral parts with annotations by the author certainly agrees well with the description of C. montana and depicts the species characters adequately. The ( Fig. 1 ) shows characteristic villous peduncle (albeit in the field some forms also exhibit completely glabrous peduncle), non-spherical and non-inflated glabrous sterile florets—are in combination constitute distinguishing features of this species. Since no known original specimen seems to exist, this illustration (No. 882) is perfectly agreeing with the protologue is selected as the lectotype of C. montana in conformity with an Art. 9.12, Schenzen Code ( Turland et al. 2018).

Figures

FIGURE 1. Lectotype of Chloris montana Roxb. [no. 882] (© The Director, Botanical Survey of India, Kolkata).