Abronia Juss.

Sandoval-Ortega, Manuel Higinio & Sánchez-Escalante, José Jesús, 2022, The family Nyctaginaceae (Caryophyllales) in Sonora, Mexico, Phytotaxa 575 (1), pp. 35-56 : 39

1. Abronia Juss. , Gen. Pl. [Jussieu]: 448 (1789).

Type (designated by Standley 1911:395):― Abronia umbellata Lamarck (1791: 469) .

Note on the type of the genus Abronia :― Some authors (e.g., Standley 1911, 1918, and Galloway 1975) mentioned Abronia umbellata as the type species. However, Hernández-Ledesma (2015) and Farr & Zijlstra (1996 onwards) considered A. californica Gamelin (1792: 1008) .

According to Rydberg (1902; see also Standley 1909), in the original publication no type species was mentioned for the genus Abronia . This genus was described from a plant collected on De la Peirouse’s journey in California and Cultivated by Mr. Colignon in the Botanic Garden of Paris ( Jussieu 1789: 448); that plant was identified by Hooker (1827) as Abronia umbellata , and he considered this species as the one that gave rise to Jussieu’s genus Abronia .

Gamelin (1972: 1008) proposed the name Abronia californica for the plant described (but no named) by Jussieu (1789: 448). However, the name A. umbellata was the first published, and in its protologue ( Lamarck 1791) the plant from California and cultivated by Colignon is mentioned, so the names A. californica and A. umbellata refer to the same plant.

Two Colignon’s specimens of Abronia are preserved in P, on the same sheet (barcodes P00675802 and P00675803), and both correspond to A. umbellata as currently accepted (see e.g., Jepson Flora Project 2022, Spellenberg 2003). Since the name A. umbellata has priority, A. californica is a synonym.

Typification of the name Abronia californica : —In the protologue Gamelin (1972: 1008) provides a description but does not mention a collector or a locality, only cites the page were Jussieu (1789: 448) describes the genus Abronia , and where it is mentioned the provenance of the specimen used to describe it. Currently that material is deposited in P (barcode P00675802) and this specimen bears a label reading a morphological description that matches the protologue of A. californica . Since it is the only extant original material we are able to trace, P00675802 is here designated as lectotype of the name A. californica .