Vachellia bolei (R.P.Subhedar 1985:440) Ragupathy, Seigler, Ebinger & Maslin (2014: 21)

Kumar, Krishnachandran Sampath, Kathiresan, Kandasamy & Arumugam, Senniappan, 2019, Vachellia bolei (Leguminosae, Mimosaceae) a possibly extinct coastal stenoendemic legume of southern India, Phytotaxa 397 (1), pp. 107-113 : 108-110

Vachellia bolei (R.P.Subhedar 1985:440) Ragupathy, Seigler, Ebinger & Maslin (2014: 21) .

≡ Acacia bolei R.P. Subhedar (1985: 440) .

= Acacia wightii Baker ex Bentham (1874: 506) , nom. illeg., non Graham ex Wight & Arn. (1834: 274).

= Vachellia wightii Ragupathy, Seigler, Ebinger & Maslin, (2014: 177) , nom. illeg. superfl.

Lectotype:— INDIA. Tamil Nadu, Tirunelveli district , sea coast (‘Tinneveli sea coast’), June 1835, Wight 896A,

[ K000791142 image!] ; Isolectotype: ‘Tirunelveli sea coast’, June 1835, Wight 896B, [CAL0000012942], (designated by Subhedhar, 1985.) Fig. 1 .

Residual Syntype: — INDIA. Tamil Nadu?, Kanniyakumari district?, (‘Travancore’, s.loc.), June 1835, Wight 896C, [K000791143 image!]. Fig. 2 .

Distribution:— INDIA. Tamil Nadu / Kerala?. Endemic to the southeastern & southwestern coasts.

Notes:— While documenting the coastal plants diversity of Tamil Nadu, the search for specimens of Acacia wightii Baker ex Bentham (1874: 506) in GBIF and Kew Herbarium Catalogue, it was found that Wight had collected specimens from sea coasts of Tirunelveli and Travancore with the same field number (896), and two specimens were deposited at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (GBIF 2018; http://specimens.kew.org/herbarium/ K000791142, K000791143), besides the single specimen housed at CAL. It may be pointed out that though the original set of Wight’s collections studied by Arnott were deposited at the herbarium of Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, there is no specimen of V. bolei (or A. wightii Baker ex Bentham ) at E (online Herbarium Catalogue at E) nor any specimen at MH too ( Henry et al. 1978). The specimen collected by Wight in June, 1835 from Tirunelveli sea coast deposited at Kew (referred here Wight 896A) had been designated as the Lectotype (K000791142) by Subhedar (1985:440), whereas the duplicate (Wight 896B) of this specimen has been designated as the Isolectotype is at CAL (CAL0000012942). The third specimen of the taxon, not mentioned by Subhedar (1985: 440), and collected again by R Wight in June 1835 from Travancore (referred here as Wight 896C) have dissected floral parts supplemented with hand drawings in the sheet by JS Gamble was also housed at K (K000791143). It is important to note that all the three specimens have only flowers but no fruits.

Recently Deshpande et al. (2018) has made the second-step lectotypification of the V. bolei wherein the K specimen of Wight 896C (K000791143 image!) collected from the erstwhile Travancore coast has been designated as the II-step lectotype, while the I-step lectotype of the specimen collected from the Tiruneveli sea coast at Kew (Wight 896A: K000791142) has been attributed to Subhedhar (1985: 440). But the specimen collected from Tirunelveli coast in June 1835 by Wight (Wight 896A: K000791142 image!) has been identified as the isolectotype which is not acceptable since the two sheets (K000791142 & K000791143) are not duplicates though they have the same field numbers (Wight 896 A & C). As the two specimens collected from Tirunelveli coast by Wight in June, 1835 (Wight 896 A & B, one at K and the other CAL respectively) in fact are duplicates (K000791142 & CAL0000012942). It should be noted that the II-Step lectotype designated was in fact collected from Travancore without mentioning any specific locality thereof and it is likely to have been collected from the West Coast, and not likely from the East Coast part of the present Kanniyakumari district (formerly with Tirunelveli district till November 01, 1956), since the region Travancore per se refers only to the West Coast of Southwestern India but not the east coast of the then Tirunelveli (Tinneveli) district (https://www.geographicus.com/P/AntiqueMap/Tinnevelly-pharoah-1854). Deshpande et al. (2018) designated the IIstep lectotype for the name considering K000791142 & K000117943 to be of the single gathering, but in the light of the present findings it is revealed that the II-step lectotype becomes null & void. The Travancore specimen (Wight 896 C, K000117943) thus can serve as the residual syntype, following the Art. 9.10 of the Code ( Turland et al., 2018).

Figures

FIGURE 1. Lectotype of Vachellia bolei (syn. Acacia bolei) designated by Subhedhar (1985). © The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Reproduced with the consent of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.

FIGURE 2. Residual syntype of Vachellia bolei (syn. Acacia bolei). © The Board of Trustees of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Reproduced with the consent of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.