Marsdenia (Brown, 1810)

Meve, Ulrich, Gâteblé, Gildas & Liede-Schumann, Sigrid, 2018, Two new species from the Ile des Pins (New Caledonia), and a not so new species from Grande Terre (New Caledonia), Phytotaxa 349 (3), pp. 201-213 : 206

Marsdenia

Marsdenia ( Brown 1810: 460) in New Caledonia recently received taxonomic enlargement with the description of five new species and one new combination (Meve et al. 2017), and hence encompasses 17 species altogether. Recent collections made on the Ile des Pins generated specimens that were provisionally identified as Marsdenia dognyensis ( Guillaumin 1964: 190) —a species fairly easily separated from the other New Caledonian Marsdenia by conspicous and coarse indumentum covering most parts of the plant, and thick, pubescent follicles. However, one fruiting specimen from Ile de Pins raised questions because it rendered the distribution area of M. dognyensis highly disjunct. Recent collection of flowering material allowed a detailed analysis of the flower details of the material from Ile des Pins and revealed substantial differences in the morphology of the corolla and, in particular, the corona. In consequence, the elements being distributed solely on the Ile des Pins are regarded as a separate taxon that obviously split from M. dognyensis proper due to geographical isolation. It is here described as a new species.