Cyathea pervilleana Fée

Janssen, Thomas & Rakotondrainibe, France, 2006, A revision of the fern family Cyatheaceae in the Mascarene Islands, Adansonia (3) 28 (2), pp. 213-241 : 239-240

Cyathea pervilleana Fée

Mémoires sur les familles des fougères, cinquième Mémoire, Genera Filicum 352 (1850-1852), as “ pervilliana ”. — Cyathea borbonica Desv. var. pervilleana (Fée) C.Chr. , Catalogue des plantes de Madagascar, Pteridophyta 20 (1931); Tardieu in Humbert, Flore de Madagascar et des Comores, fam. 4: 14 (1951). — Type: Madagascar, Pervillé s.n. (putative type, K!, “ex herb. Fée”) .

REMARKS

Fée indicates the original material in his protologue by “Habitat in Nos Beh [Nosy Bé] Madagascariensium (Pervillé), et in insula Borbonia”. Pervillé collected in Madagascar ( Dorr 1997), the Mascarenes and the Seychelles. We traced a specimen, Pervillé s.n. (K!, “ex herb. Fée ”), consisting of a single pinna with a short attached rachis fragment. The pinnules are sessile, 3 × 0.4 cm, with acute apices, completely crenate margins, and 1(-2) furcate veins. The pinna is 34 cm long and bears approximately 40 pairs of pinnules. This characterization and especially the measurements taken on the specimen perfectly agree with the description given in the protologue leading us to assume that it is part of the original material. However , the locality information on the label is deviating from that accompanying the original description and although no further corresponding specimens from Fée’s herbarium have been found at P or STR, we suppose that the Kew specimen only represents a fraction of the original material and might be chosen as a lectotype as soon as the status of Cyathea pervilleana has been clarified .

Bory 330 (P!) from Réunion, determined here as Cyathea borbonica var. borbonica , has relatively long and narrow (3 × 0.4 cm) acute pinnules with completely crenate margins. This specimen is morphologically extremely close to the putative type of Cyathea pervilleana (K!). As we are not aware of any material from Madagascar conforming to the description of Cyathea pervilleana , this leads us to assume that the species is most likely not from Madagascar, but from Réunion and the name to be cited in synonymy to Cyathea borbonica var. borbonica . However, this cannot be proven with the available material.

Kuhn (1868: 163) places the species in synonymy to Cyathea canaliculata var. laevigata , but we argue that it is morphologically clearly different.