Asparagus khorasanensis Hamdi & Assadi (2009: 421)

Akhani, Hossein, Abdullahi, Hussaini, Ürker, Okan & Malekmohammadi, Maryam, 2024, Molecular phylogenetic studies on Asparagus (Asparagaceae) revealed the position of the highly endangered Irano-Turkish halophytic species A. lycaonicus P. H. Davis related to A. officinalis L., Phytotaxa 646 (2), pp. 125-142 : 136

Asparagus khorasanensis Hamdi & Assadi (2009: 421) .

Holotype:— IRAN. Khorassan Province; Mashhad toward Torbat-Heidaryeh , 1750–1900 m, 15 June 1981, M. Assadi & V. Mozaffarian 35895 ( TARI, not seen).

Based on the Flora of Iran ( Assadi 2023), the type specimen has been collected from 60 km N Torbate-Heydarieh, Robate Sefid, 1900m. Before having the opportunity to check the type specimen, we could not verify the correct data. Although, the authors of this paper have not seen the type specimen, one specimen has been collected from a locality near the type location: Khorassan: Between Nishabur and Kashmar, 70 km S Neyshabur, gypsum hills near Chelpu, 35°37’23”N, 58°31’48”E, 1846m, 24 October 2007, H.Akhani & F. Memariani 19054 (Herb.Akhani). Some additional specimens have been cited in Flora of Iran, most of them from close localities in southern parts of Khorassan Province on gypsum-marl hills. One of the reported specimens (Amirabadi & Payab 10837) has been collected from the same locality as Akhani & Memariani 19054. The authors of the original protologue have compared A. khorasanensis with A. breslerianus using following differences: cladodes 2–4 (not 1–3), thicker cladodes, shorter internodes, longer scale leaves (2–2.5 mm long, not 0.5–0.7 mm long) and slightly larger berries (7–8 mm not 5–5.5 mm) and a larger corolla (7–8 mm not 6–7 mm long) ( Hamdi & Assadi, 2009). Comparing Flora of Iran ( Assadi 2023) and the original manuscript ( Hamdi and Assadi 2009), we found contradiction in the description of the species’ characters. The corolla length is described to be 4 mm long, the leaves are just 1 mm, and the berries of A. breslerianus and A. khorassanicus are described to be 10 and 9 mm in Assadi (2023). The cladode character, “straight versus crowed” seems to be a linguistic mistake in Table 1 page 424 ( Hamdi & Assadi, 2009) that arose probably by software auto-correction confusing “crowed” against “curved”. We consider A. khorassanicus to be a synonym of A. breslerianus based on the present data.