Scilla pancration (Steinh.) O’Shaughnessy

Turner, I. M., 2011, The contribution of Sir William Brooke O’Shaughnessy (1809 - 1889) to plant taxonomy, Phytotaxa 15, pp. 57-63 : 60

Scilla pancration (Steinh.) O’Shaughnessy

Drimia pancration (Steinh.) J.C. Manning & Goldblatt in Manning et al. (2003: 557). Squilla pancration Steinheil (1836a: 371) , (1836b: 279). Scilla pancration (Steinh.) O’Shaughnessy (1841: 662) . Urginea pancration (Steinh.) Ogilvie (1855: 373) . Urginea maritima subsp. pancration (Steinh.) Richter (1890: 218) . Charybdis pancration (Steinh.) Speta (1998: 60) . Type: originally from Malta but cultivated in France.

Steinheil segregated the Mediterranean plant Scilla maritima into a separate genus, Squilla , and at the same time separated a new species from Scilla maritima , which he called Squilla pancration . Stafleu and Cowan (1985) indicate that this was first published by Steinheil (1836a), who was an army doctor, in October 1836 in a French journal of military medicine, but most taxonomic works cite Steinheil’s paper ( Steinheil 1836b) from a botanical journal of November 1836. As there is no reference to the earlier publication in this work, there are no nomenclatural repurcussions relating to authors failing to cite the earliest publication.

In The Bengal Dispensatory, Scilla pancration is listed with other Scilla species. There is no author given for the name and no reference to Squilla pancration . However, as the full title of The Dispensatory indicates, Lindley’s works were consulted by O’Shaughnessy and he refers to Squilla pancration in his Flora Medica ( Lindley 1838). This indirect reference and the unique epithet make it clear that a transfer from Squilla to Scilla has been effected by O’Shaughnessy, and the combination is considerably earlier than that presently listed in IPNI. Currently the species is considered to be a member of the largely African genus Drimia ( Manning et al. 2003) . In researching the synonymy of the species I also found an earlier publication for the combination Urginea pancration . This had been attributed to de Philippe in a number of publications, but I have not been able to trace any original work. Speta (1998) provides reference to a French journal of engineering, but this is a short account of the starch extraction business run by one J. Giordano de Philippe ( Anonymous 1863), with no mention of species names.