Allium serbicum Visiani & Pančić (1865: 479)

Clementi, Moreno, Anačkov, Goran, Miola, Antonella & Vukojičić, Snežana, 2015, Typification and taxonomical notes on the names published by Roberto de Visiani and Josif Pančić in Plantae Serbicae Rariores aut Novae-Decas II, Phytotaxa 224 (1), pp. 29-44 : 41-42

Allium serbicum Visiani & Pančić (1865: 479) ( Fig. 9)

Lectotype (designated here):— SERBIA. Illustration in Visiani & Pančić (1865: t. 8).

Additional specimens examined:— SERBIA. Mokra gora Serb[ia] merid[ionalis] in rupestrib[us] calcareis, Jul[io], J. Pančić s.n. ( BEOU 11931!).

Note:—The original label of the only specimen that we found, kept in the Herbarium Pancicianum — BEOU, includes the name of the genus, locality, and habitat, followed by the month of collection and the collector’s signature. The year of collection is not indicated. The epithet “ serbicum ” was clearly added on the label after the rest, and it is therefore likely that this specimen is part of the original material. Nevertheless, we preferred to select the illustration that was published along with the protologue, which illustrates the taxon very clearly, as the specimen is small and not very well preserved. Hayek (1933) treated this species as a synonym of Allium tenuiflorum Tenore (1811: 165) , which was known from Italy. This nomenclatural approach caused much confusion. Tatić (1975) followed this approach in the Flora of Serbia, and included A. tenuiflorum in the list of the Serbian Allium species. In two studies of the genus Allium in the Balkan Peninsula, Stearn (1978, 1981) treated A. serbicum as a synonym of the typical subspecies of Allium pallens Linnaeus (1862) , and he followed this nomenclature in Flora Europaea ( Stearn 1980) as well, which includes also A. tenuiflorum as a subspecies of A. pallens ( Stearn 1980) . More recently, in several studies of the genus Allium , including Gregory (1996) and Govaerts (2006), A. tenuiflorum was reinstated to the rank of species; for this reason its presence is confirmed in the countries of former Yugoslavia. However, in these works, A. serbicum is still inconsistently included in A. pallens . This disorder is caused by lack of knowledge of A. serbicum . Insufficient data on the distribution and the differential morphological characters of A. serbicum are the result of the inaccessibility of the area where it is known to grow. In a morphological study of the species of Allium in Serbia, Anačkov (2009) showed that specimens harvested in Beli Rzav, on the Mokra Gora, correspond to the description given in Visiani & Pančić (1865), but are clearly different from the description of A. pallens given by Stearn (1978, 1980). A. serbicum is a smaller plant that grows on steep and often rocky calcareous movable surfaces. Compared to A. pallens , the valves are smaller, with one being evidently shorter. The flowers are milky white, without the pronounced lines that characterise A. pallens . Moreover, the inflorescence does not ever bear more than 23 flowers (Anačkov, pers. com.), while in A. pallens the number of flowers can reach up to 70. These recent observations led to the conclusion that A. serbicum should be considered as a separate species from A. pallens .