Justicia glabra K.D. Koenig ex Roxb (1820: 132)

Soumya, Puliyakode & Sunojkumar, Purayidathkandy, 2019, Typification of three names in Justicia L. (Acanthaceae), Phytotaxa 391 (2), pp. 138-142 : 138

Justicia glabra K.D. Koenig ex Roxb (1820: 132)

Lectotype (designated here):— INDIA, Koenig s.n. ( BM001253079 ) Fig. 1 .

Notes:— Justicia glabra was first introduced by Roxburgh in Hortus Bengalensis (1814) as a nomen nudum . Later he (Roxburgh 1820) validated the name by providing a small description. He mentioned the type locality as “coast of Coromandel”, but did not mention any specimens. Graham (1988) cited the type as " India, Koenig s.n. (? isotype BM)”. Based on this information, we traced the specimen at BM having the annotation “Coromandel prope Tanjore, K.D. Koenig” in Koenig’s handwriting. From this it is clearly understood, that the specimen was collected by Koenig from Tanjore (previously Tanjore is a part of Coromandel). So, it is reasonable to mention that Roxburgh consulted Koenig’s specimen, while describing J. glabra and based on his annotation, Roxburgh wrote the author citation as J. glabra K.D. Koenig ex Roxburgh. Moreover , according to Stafleu and Cowan (1983), Koenig was an employee at British Museum. Since Roxburgh ascribed the plant name to Koenig, the specimen collected by Koenig at BM can qualify as original material according to Art. 9.4 a) of ICN (Turland et al., 2018). The type citation of Graham (1988: 589) did not achieve to select a lectotype for the name Justicia glabra because she did not explicitly accept that specimen (or gathering) as the lecotype of the name (Art.9.11). Here, we select the BM duplicate (BM001253079) as the lectotype according to Art. 9.3 & 9.12 of ICN (Turland et al., 2018).

Figures

FIGURE 1. Lectotype of Justicia glabra K.D. Koenig ex Roxb (BM001253079). © The Board of Trustees for the Natural History Museum (BM), U.K. Reproduced with permission.