Selaginella ornithopodioides

Ferrer-Gallego, P. Pablo & Boisset, Fernando, 2015, Lectotypification of the spikemosses Selaginella denticulata and S. ornithopodioides (Selaginellaceae, Lycopsida), Phytotaxa 205 (4), pp. 277-282 : 278-279

Selaginella ornithopodioides (L.) Spring (1838: 216).

As indicated by Chandra et al. (2008) an earlier lectotypification was done by Alston (1945: 222), on Hermann’s Sri Lankan plant cited by Linnaeus, now housed at the Natural History Museum. But there are two relevant specimens in this collection. Therefore, the type designation made by Alston (1945) should be treated as the first-step lectotype because it cannot be ascertained which of the two specimens at BM he selected as lectotype. Thus a second-step lectotype has to be designated following McNeill et al. (2012: ICN Art. 9.17).

Paul Hermann (1646–1695) was Medical Officer to the Dutch East India Company between 1672 and 1677 in Ceylon (now Sri Lanka), and during those years he made one of the earliest scientific collections of plant specimens on the island. The Hermann’s material consisted in four bound volumes containing pressed plants and insects and a volume of drawings. Linnaeus studied this material, and the result was his Flora Zeylanica ( Linnaeus 1747) . Fortunately, Linnaeus numbered the species consecutively, writing the corresponding numbers next to the Hermann’s specimens and drawings, making an explicit link between descriptions and specimens. Later, most of the Sri Lanka taxa described by Linnaeus (1753) were based on the corresponding Flora Zeylanica ( Trimen, 1887; Jarvis 2007).

The nomen specificum legitimum in the Linnaean protologue ( Linnaeus, 1753) “ Lycopodium foliis bifariis distichis, surculis repentibus, spicis sessilibus ” ( Lycopodium distichous leaves in two rows, creeping shoots, spikes sessile) is followed by three synonyms: “ Lycopodium procumbens repens , ramis subspicatis, foliolis distichis alternis ovatis appendiculatis ” from Linnaeus (1747: nº 388 [page 184]), “ Lycopodioides repens , pinnulis ornithopodii ” from Dillenius (1742: 464 t. 66, f. 1B), and “ Muscus lycopodioides denticulatus scandens repensve in extremitatibus ramulorum polyspermos ” from Ray (1704: 32), and with the indicated locality “ Habitat in India ”.

Among the original material of Lycopodium ornithopodioides cited by Jarvis (2007: 647), only one sheet of Linnaeus’s original material is preserved in the Herbarium Hermann of The Natural History Museum of London at BM. Van Ooststroom (1937) had earlier reported that two large volumes of old plant collections at Leiden were also undoubtedly part of Hermann’s herbarium, but no herbarium sheet of S. ornithopodioides was reported there.

However, the herbarium sheet Herb. Hermann 3: 1, No. 388 (BM) includes two specimens of Selaginella ornithopodioides ) (material determined by Trimen in 1887) with barcode BM000621788 (image available at: http:// www.nhm.ac.uk/resources/research-curation/projects/hermann-herbarium/lgimages/BM000621788.JPG) and barcode BM000621789 (at base of the sheet) (image available at: http://www.nhm.ac.uk/resources/research-curation/projects/ hermann-herbarium/lgimages/BM000621789.JPG). Both are annotated “388” (explicitly referring to the number of the species account of Lycopodium ornithopodioides in the Flora Zeylanica ( Linnaeus 1747: 184) and the sheet presents two annotations: “ Lycopodioides repens , pinnulis ornithopodii, Dill. Musc. 64. 8. 66 f. 1. B ” and “ Muscus denticulatus Zeylanicus minor ”. We have been unable to trace any further original material in any of the other Linnaean and Linnaean-linked herbaria.

Although the illustration ( Dillenius 1742: 4624 t. 66, f. 1B) and the Hermann’s specimens (barcode BM000621788 and barcode BM000621789) are identifiable as S. ornithopodioides , the good conservation condition of the specimen BM000621789 allows its designation as a better choice for the [second-step] lectotype.