Circaea mollis Siebold & Zuccarini (1845: 134)

Luo, Yike & Xie, Lei, 2023, A checklist of Onagraceae in the Pan-Himalaya region, Phytotaxa 597 (4), pp. 245-268 : 252

2.5. Circaea mollis Siebold & Zuccarini (1845: 134) .

Lectotype (designated by Boufford 1982):— JAPAN. Legit Bürger in Japonia , Siebold s.n. ( L0008646 digital image).

Distribution: —N Hengduan.

Note: — Circaea mollis is the most robust herbaceous plant in the genus. The plants form extensive colonies of many square meters when growing in favorable conditions. It is the only species in Circaea that can ranged in to warm temperate zone at low elevation. This species only occurs in northwest corner of the Pan-Himalaya region.

Siebold & Zuccarini (1845) did not cite specimens in the protologue of Circaea mollis . Boufford (1982) verified the original materials of C. mollis and selected one sheet (Siebold s.n.) in L (L0008646) as the lectotype, and another two sheets (L0008647 and L0008648). as the “isolectotypes”. However, Akiyama et al. (2016) argued that the two “isolectotypes” recognized by Boufford (1982) were not the original materials because they have no annotations by Siebold and/or Zuccarini. Akiyama et al. (2016) also cited M0154088 (Siebold s.n.) as one of the original materials because there is a label that reads “Legit Bürger in Japonia. Communicavit v. Siebold, Herbarium Zuccarinii” on the sheet. Because we are not sure the status of M0154088, L0008648, and L0008647, only L0008646 is cited in this study.