Dracaena pfennigii ( Mbugua 2007: 33 ) Takawira-Nyenya & Thiede, 2021

Takawira-Nyenya, Ratidzayi, Thiede, Joachim & Mucina, Ladislav, 2021, New nomenclatural and taxonomic adjustments in Dracaena (Asparagaceae), Phytotaxa 524 (4), pp. 293-300 : 295

8. Dracaena pfennigii ( Mbugua 2007: 33) Takawira-Nyenya & Thiede comb. nov.

Basionym:— Sansevieria pfennigii Mbugua (2007: 33) , in Flora of Tropical East Africa. Dracaenaceae: 33 (2007).

Type:— TANZANIA. Lindi District: 10 km W of Lindi, near Lake Lutamba, 28 January 1935, Schlieben 5917 (holotype MO 1703892 barcode MO-2246427 digital image!, available at https://www.tropicos.org/name/100254531; isotypes: B 10 0715396 digital image!, available at https://herbarium.bgbm.org/object/ B100715396 ; BR 9972780 & BR 9894983 [two cross-labelled sheets] digital images!, available at https://www.botanicalcollections.be/specimen/ BR0000009972780 & https://www.botanicalcollections.be/specimen/ BR0000009894983 ; HBG-513972 digital image!, available at http://www.herbariumhamburgense.de/herbarsheets/disk_batchaa/ medium/HBG-513972.jpg; K000523793 digital image!, available at http://specimens.kew.org/herbarium/ K000523793 ) .

Note:—In September 1975, Pfennig (1981a: 227) visited the Lindi region in southeastern Tanzania where Schlieben had collected what would later become the type collection of S. pfennigii (Schlieben 5917) and identified plants he found there as S. canaliculata Carrière (1861: 449 ; = Dracaena canaliculata (Carrière) Byng & Christenhusz [2018: 65] ). Sansevieria pfennigii Mbugua (2007: 33) was described based on the type collection Schlieben 5917 and two cited paratypes Stuhlmann 1126a ( HBG n.v.) and Luke & Kibure 9773 ( MO 5765316 barcode MO-2813700 digital image!, available at http://legacy.tropicos.org/Image/100571592) which Scharf & Burkart (2021: 6) determined as actually belonging to other species. Pfennig‘s identification of plants in the Lindi region as S. canaliculata may have prompted Butler & Jankalski (2010: 5-7), Jankalski (2015: 17), Webb & Newton (2018: 28), and Newton (2020: 1359) to reject S. pfennigii as a species in its own right, treating it as conspecific with S. canaliculata . Scharf & Burkart (2021) reinstated S. pfennigii after Uwe Scharf ‘s visit to the Lindi Region in Tanzania in March 2018. He found S. pfennigii growing in close vicinity to S. canaliculata and observed that both were morphologically distinct. Following the re-instatement of S. pfennigii , a new combination of the species in Dracaena is here presented.