Lysiphyllum dipterum (Blume ex Miq.) Bandyop. & Ghoshal, 2014

Bandyopadhyay, Subir & Ghoshal, Partha Pratim, 2014, Two new combinations in Lysiphyllum (Leguminosae-Caesalpinioideae), Phytotaxa 178 (4), pp. 298-300 : 298-299

2. Lysiphyllum dipterum (Blume ex Miq.) Bandyop. & Ghoshal , comb. nov.

Bauhinia diptera Blume ex Miq., Nieuwe Verh. Eerste Kl. Kon. -Ned. Inst. Wetensch. Amsterdam ser. 3,3: 12. 1850 ( Miquel 1850a: 12).

Type : Borneo, G [unung] Prarawin , Korthals s.n. (neotype here determined, L0504140 , image!); Borneo , Sabah , Sandakan , Lahad Datu district, Silam, 500 ft, 20.7.1966, Ahmad Talip 54902 (epitype here designated, L0504136 image!, isoepitype K000980011 , image!) .

Note. B. diptera Collett & Hemsl. (1890: 52) , the name given to a Burmese species from the Shan hills, is an illegitimate later homonym of B. diptera Blume ex Miq. (1850a: 12) . The accepted name of this species, now known from Myanmar, China and Thailand ( Wunderlin 2011), is Phanera yunnanensis (Franchet) Wunderlin (2011: 1) .

Miquel (1850a) in the protologue of B. diptera Blume ex Miq. did not cite any specimen; thus there was no cited type for this name. In the protologue, however, he did include the information ‘ Flores desunt’, denoting that the description was created from specimen lacking flowers. Miquel (1850a) cited the name as ‘ B.? diptera, BLUME , mss.’ which indicates that he had used the manuscript name written by Blume. An additional issue is the use of the ‘?’ in the name. De Wit (1956) stated that Miquel (1850a) had added a question mark to the epithet ‘ diptera’ but accepted it without expression of doubt in a later publication ( Miquel 1855) under Phanera . Dr. K. N. Gandhi (pers. comm. 2014) stated that the query sign given in the protologue as ‘ B.? diptera’ refers to the genus, rather than the species epithet. Miquel (1850a) was certain that his taxon was a new species, but he was uncertain about the genus. This does not invalidate a name according to Art. 36.1(a) ( McNeill et al. 2012).

Three of the sheets at L (Doeson, Korthals 22, L 0504119 image!; Doeson, Korthals 22a, L 0504127 image!; G [unung] Prarawin, L 0504128 image!) bear the annotation ‘ Bauhinia ? diptera Bl ’ in Blume’s handwriting (see Van Steenis 1950: CXLVIII). We have therefore questioned whether these specimens may represent the original material used by Miquel in creating the taxon description. This question is explored here.

The specimens annotated by Blume ( L 0504119, L 0504127, L 0504128) are sterile, as was the material used by Miquel. However, the dimensions of these specimens do not agree with the description created by Miquel. The specimen L 0504119 consists of a single leaf which is slightly more than 14 inches in length, and on L 0504127 the length of the longest leaf, which is broken at the apex, is c. 7.5 inches. The length of these leaves therefore considerably exceeds the range of lengths given in the protologue, of ‘5–5½ poll’ [a poll. = an inch, i.e. 2.5 cm ( Stearn 1983: 371)]. The dimensions of specimen L 0504128 come close to those given by Miquel in the protologue but do not exactly agree with it. The leaves are c. 4.5–5.5 inches long, and the petiole length c. 2.5–4 inches, compared with leaves 5–5½ inches (‘poll.’) long and petioles 2–4 inches long in the protologue. Moreover, Miquel does not cite the collection locality of this specimen, G [unung] Prarawin, making it more doubtful that Miquel used this specimen on which to base his description. None of the above collections annotated by Blume can thus be considered with confidence to be the specimens on which Miquel based the description in the protologue.

In his 1956 revision of Malaysian Bauhinieae, de Wit created a new genus, Bracteolanthus , into which he placed the species Bauhinia diptera , as the comb. nov. Bracteolanthus dipterus (Blume ex Miq.) de Wit. In doing so, he overlooked the protologue of B. diptera Blume ex Miq. ( Miquel 1850a) . He had seen instead the reproduction of the protologue in part I of Miquel (1850b), a book consisting of the collation of three of this author’s earlier publications (see Stafleu & Cowan 1981). This, however, does not invalidate his new combination B. dipterus (Blume ex Miq.) de Wit because it is considered as an error correctable under Art. 41.8(a) of the Code ( McNeill et al. 2012).

De Wit (1956) cited a sterile specimen ( Borneo , Mount Prarawin, Korthals s.n. L 908.112 – 117 ; barcode no. L0504140 ) as the type of Bracteolanthus dipterus . The sheet L0504140 does not bear the collector name Korthals; however, it is assumed that Korthals was the collector, as the original label appeared to bear his handwriting (Dr. Bijmoer, pers. comm.), and the sheet has the same kind of printed label as L0504128 , which was a collection of Korthals. Additionally, the locality given is the same for both of these specimens .

We examine here whether this specimen may have been used by Miquel in creating the species description. In the protologue of B. diptera ( Miquel 1850a) the leaflets were stated to be ‘abrupte acuminata, acumine lineari obtuso’, but all the four leaves of L 0504140 are broken at the apex. Moreover, the longest leaf on this specimen is c. 12.5 inches long instead of ‘5–5½ poll. [inches] longa’, as in the description of Miquel. The fact that Miquel did not mention the locality of this specimen, G [unung] Prarawin in his description, also suggests that he had not seen this specimen. We conclude, therefore, that Miquel did not base the description of B. diptera on this specimen.

In the absence of specimens verifiable as original material (Art. 9.3; McNeill et al. 2012), we here confirm the specimen that was cited as the type of Bracteolanthus dipterus by de Wit, and inadvertently therefore as the type of B. diptera (Korthals s.n. L 908.112–117; barcode no. L 0504140), to be the neotype of B. diptera Blume ex Miq.

A flowering specimen has also been designated here as the epitype because this sterile specimen will not serve the purpose of the precise application of the name.

DISTRIBUTION: Endemic to Borneo.