Syzygium polypetalum (Wall.) Merrill & L.M. Perry (1941: 125)

Byng, James W., Wilson, Peter G. & Snow, Neil, 2015, Typifications and nomenclatural notes on Indian Myrtaceae, Phytotaxa 217 (2), pp. 101-116 : 110

27. Syzygium polypetalum (Wall.) Merrill & L.M. Perry (1941: 125) .

= Eugenia angustifolia Roxburgh (1832: 490) , nom. illeg., non Lamarck 1789. = Jambosa polypetala Wallich (1840: 27) . = Eugenia polypetala (Wall.) Wight (1842: 8 . t. 610). Type citation:—‘A small tree, a native of Chittagong, where it flowers in March and April. The fruit ripens in June and July’. Lectotype (designated here): Icones Roxburgh Number 2135 (K!).

Distribution:— India [Arunchal Pradesh, Assam, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Tripura, West Bengal], Bangladesh and Myanmar.

Notes:—Roxburgh’s name was illegitimate and Wallich’s Jambosa polypetala is a validly published replacement name. Merrill and Perry (1941), amongst others, were unaware of this and cited Wight as the earliest publication. As a result, the authorship is sometimes given as ‘Wall. ex Wight’, but this is incorrect. Since Wallich’s name is a nomen novum, it automatically takes the type of the replaced name, Roxburgh’s Eugenia angustifolia ( McNeill et al. 2012, Article 7.4), and is not typified by either of the Wallich Catalogue Numbers (3616 & 1830) cited by Merrill and Perry.