Piper peepuloides Roxb. Hort. Bengal

Mukherjee, Prasanta Kumar, 2020, Nomenclatural notes on Piper (Piperaceae) from India III, Phytotaxa 441 (3), pp. 263-273 : 268-270

8. Piper peepuloides Roxb. Hort. Bengal 4. 1814. nom. nud. Fl. Ind. i. 159. 1820

Type:— BANGLADESH: Silhet , Roxburgh (lectotype designated here Roxb. Icon. Pl. 2169 (K-image!; isolectotype CAL!).

Chavica peepuloides (Roxb.) Miq. Syst. Piperac. 237.1843.

Chavica neesiana Miq. Syst. Piperac. 249. 1843.

Type:— NEPAL: Wallich List no. 6656 (lectotype designated by Suwanphakdee et al (2016: 613) U (U1476536-left hand specimen!)

Piper arunachalensis Gajurel et al Bot. J. Linn.. Soc.137: 417. 2001. nom. invalid.

Type:— INDIA: Arunachal Pradesh, Durpang R. F. Banderdawa, (lectotype designated here Gajurel 79 CAL!; syntype Gajurel 80 CAL!)

Distribution:— INDIA: West Bengal, Sikkim, Assam, Arunachal Pradesh, Meghalaya; BANGADESH, BHUTAN, NEPAL.

Note:— The name Piper peepuloides was first used by W. Roxburgh (1814: 4) for a plant growing in the Calcutta Botanic Garden, that was sourced from Sylhet ( Bangladesh?) by Mr. M. R. Smith. The name, however, was an invalid one as it lacked a description (Art. 38.1, Turland et al. 2018). The name was subsequently published posthumously in Roxburgh’s Flora Indica with the requisite description (1820: 159). The locality was given as Sylhet, same as was mentioned in 1814. Roxburgh described the species as having leaves equally short petioled and ovate and ovatelanceolate, with three to five veins, smooth, and acuminate, both sides of the base being equal. Stipules stem clasping and petiolary. Roxburgh described the female spikes only which according to him are cylindric, short peduncled or sub sessile, solitary and directly opposite to the leaves. and berries as obliquely oval and one celled.

The main difficulty in typifying Roxburgh’s names is to locate original materials, i.e. the specimens that are considered to have been associated with him for the names in question (Foreman 1997). Roxburgh’s earlier collections at Calcutta garden are said to have been destroyed by inundation (King, 1895). He distributed specimens freely but had not kept a set for himself. Five herbaria that have significant numbers of Roxburgh’s specimens are BM, BR, E, G, and LIV ( Forman 1997). Herb.CAL also possesses a few. Wallich received a small herbarium of Roxburgh (Sealy 1956). Roxburgh’s specimens in the Wallich herbarium either bear labels in Roxburgh’s own hand writing and the author citation as ‘Roxb.’ or ‘ex Roxb. ( Forman 1997: 515).

The type of this species should be one which had been used by Roxburgh in describing the species and was growing at the Calcutta Botanic Garden. A search at different herbaria failed to find a specimen that can definitely be associated with Roxburgh. Forman’s (1997: 522) partial list of original specimens of Roxburgh’s species of phanerogams at Brussels and in the Wallich herbarium at K, LIV, and Oxford (OXF?) does not include Piper peepuloides .

Authors following Roxburgh were not explicit whether they had seen Roxburgh’s specimen of the species. Schultes in Roemer & Schultes (1822: 240) treated the species, with a spelling as Piper pipuloides , and followed Roxburgh in describing it. Supposedly he has not seen Roxburgh’s specimen. Sprengel (1825: 117) used the name Piper pupuloides , but there is no indication that he had seen Roxburgh’s specimen either. The same is true for Miquel (1843: 237), who treated it as Chavica peepuloides and provided a description of the male plants, citing Wallich Num. list no.6650A (collected from Sylhet by F.D. (Francis de Silva), W.G (W. Gomez) & H.B. (Henry Bruce). C.DC. (1869: 389) merely followed Miquel in treating the species. Specimens as cited by Miquel are found in the Wallich herbarium at K (K000794361), U (U1476553), P (P 01656249) and CAL. There are similar specimens at K (K 000794359, & K000794360) and BM (BM 000949831) with the label of Wallich Num. list no. 6650A, but without the mention of the collector(s). Interestingly, none of those latter specimens have the typical Wallichian label. Further, (K000794359) has the name annotated as Piper pipuloides , the spelling as was used by Schultes (1822). None of the specimens bears annotation in Roxburgh’s own handwriting. Most interestingly, all of them are male plants contrary to Roxburgh’s assertion that he had seen the female plants only and as such none of these specimens can be considered as the type of Roxburgh’s name.

Roxburgh almost always worked on living plants, mostly growing in the Calcutta Botanic Garden (Sealy 1956: 299). Roxburgh made full size color drawings (‘Icones’) of plants described as novelties through the commissioning of native Indian artists under his direct supervision. In his notes in the Flora Indica reprint, C. B. Clarke (1874) stated that Roxburgh left at the Calcutta Botanic Garden (CAL) a set of life-sized colored drawings, often accompanied by botanical dissections of plants numbered to 2,542. These drawings depict most of the Indian species as are described in his Flora Indica . Roxburgh had two complete copies made. A duplicate set, also made by Roxburgh, is now at Kew (K). Roxburgh numbered each of the drawings matching to the numbering of his description for the species in his manuscript of ‘ Flora Indica ’ preserved at K (Sealy 1956–1957: 301). Forman (1997: 519) cited evidence to indicate Roxburgh’s close involvement linking the drawings at K with the descriptions, and so did Sanjappa et al. (1994) for the drawings at CAL. Notes in pencil were provided by Roxburgh on some of them. Perhaps he preferred these illustrations as vouchers for the written descriptions in his manuscript. It should be noted that only five of Roxburgh’s species of Piper have been drawn. The drawings both at K and CAL in effect constitute original materials of his species ( Forman 1997: 520) and are of great importance for the typification of Roxburgh’s species (Stafleu & Cowan 1983). Many of the names he published have accordingly been typified on the drawings.

Piper peepuloides is numbered 2169 in Roxburgh’s manuscript preserved at K as well as on the drawing for the species at both CAL and K. However, while the plate at K also contains the drawing of P. silvaticum ( Piper sylvaticum ) with number 2168, that at CAL contains Piper chaba ( P. retrofractum Vahl 1804: 314 ) with number 1518 as the associated one. Such discrepancies between the two sets were noted by Sanjappa et al. (1994). The drawings for P. peepuloides are identical in both the sets. The drawings show a branch with sub sessile, cylindrical, female inflorescences along with leaves matching the characters as mentioned in the original description. Roxburgh’s original description has no reference to the male plant as could be found in the specimen Wallich Num. list no. 6656. In the absence of Roxburgh’s specimen, figure no. 2169 of Roxburgh’s drawings at both CAL and K are considered as original materials (Art.9.1 Note 1, Turland et al. 2018). As a consequence, drawing / plate no. 2169 of Roxburgh’s Icon at K is designated here as the lectotype, while the one at CAL is designated as the isolectotype. The reason for selecting the material at K is its easy accessibility of its image online.

Suwanphakdee et al. (2016: 613) designated Wallich Num. list no. 6650A of the herbarium U (U 1476553) as the lectotype of the name, while that at the herbarium K (K 000794359) was designated by Mukherjee (2018) as the lectotype for the same. It turns out that both of them were wrong in designating the lectotype for the reasons stated above, thereby necessitating supersession of their lectotypifications with the designation of a new lectotype.

Furthermore, Suwanphakdee et al. (2016) treated P. peepuloides as synonymous to P. mullesua . They probably had some confusion about Wallich Num. List no. 6656, collected from Nepal in 1821 and named as P. brachystachyum by Wallich. However, the name remained unpublished. It is well known that Wallich’s collections are notoriously mixed and Wallich’s P. brachystachyum too does contain mixed collections at different herbaria.

The part (the ‘major part’ according to Miquel) of Wallich Num. list no. 6656 having short cylindrical female spikes whose peduncles are shorter than the petioles was described by Miquel (1843: 249) as Chavica neesiana Miq. The left-hand side specimen of Wallich Num. list no. 6656 at U (U1476536-image!) was designated as the holotype of C. neesiana by Suwanphakdee et al. (1916), while the right hand side specimen of the same sheet was designated by them as the lectotype of C. sphaerostachya Miquel. However , an examination of U146536 reveals that all the specimens on the sheet represent one species, i.e. C. neesiana . These resemble the plate/ drawing no. 2169 in the Roxburgh’s Icon as well as Wallich Num. list no. 6650 A (of P. peepuloides ) and also the specimen at U (U1476536-image!) and the left-hand specimen at K of (K001124429-image!). As such, P. peepuloides and C. neesiana are synonymous as already been noted by Hooker (1886: 93). The name P. peepuloides , being older, has priority over the latter. K (K001124429) -left hand specimen) is the isotype of C. neesiana . Both the U and K specimens have the annotation as Piper brachystachyum Wall.

The other part of Wallich Num.list no. 6656, also named as P.brachystachyum by Wallich with subglobose or ovateglobose female spikes bearing cohering/ coalescent fruits was described by Miquel (1843: 273) as C. sphaerostachya . Miquel also cited Schmidt’s collection from Java (U147628 image!). These can be found at K (K001124432-right hand one, (K K001124430, K000794464-image!), G-DC (G00207123-image!) and CAL (379243!). Unfortunately, no such specimen with Miquel’s annotation could be found at U except (U 476570-image!) collected from Courtallum by Wight, bearing annotation as C. sphaerostachya by Miquel and mentioned by him (1846: 551). The plants in all these specimens are identical to the female plant shown in t. 42 of Miquel’s illustration (44: 1845). The same plant was named earlier as P. mullesua Don (1825:20) . Hence, P. mullesua is the correct name for C. sphaerostachya .

Piper mullesua is considered here as distinct from P. peepuloides because it differs in the characters of the female spikes. These are long pedicelled and spherical to ovoid in P. mullesua and subsessile and cylindrical in P. peepuloides . Other details have been provided by Mukherjee (2018: 23–25), who recognized the following as synonyms for the taxon: P. guigual Don , P. brachystachyum Wallich ex Hooker , P. pleiocarpum Chang & Tseng and P. nirjulianum Gajurel et al. , Chavica guigual (Don) Miquel , Chavica sphaerostachya Miquel and Chavica neesiana Miquel