Verbascum gaetulum (Maire) Murb., in Bull. Soc. Hist. Nat. Afrique N. 18: 82. 1927.

Khamar, Hamid, Oualidi, Jalal El, Touhami, Amina Ouazzani & Civeyrel, Laure, 2023, Nomenclature and typification in Verbascum (Scrophulariaceae) from North Africa, PhytoKeys 225, pp. 115-152 : 115

Verbascum gaetulum (Maire) Murb., in Bull. Soc. Hist. Nat. Afrique N. 18: 82. 1927.

Verbascum thapsus gaetulum ≡ Verbascum thapsus subsp. gaetulum Maire, in Bull. Soc. Hist. Nat. Afrique N. 9: 182. 1918. Type: Morocco]: Djebel Araïra, lits des oueds, 1400 m, 29 Mai 1918, R. Maire, s.n. (Lectotype, designated here: MPU [MPU000364]!; isolectotype: MPU[MPU000365]!). [image of lectotype available at https://plants.jstor.org/stable/viewer/10.5555/al.ap.specimen.mpu000364]

Verbascum simplex gaetulum ≡ Verbascum simplex var. gaetulum (Maire) Maire, in Cat. Pl. Maroc 3: 665. 1934.

Notes.

Maire (1918) published the name Verbascum thapsus subsp. gaetulum based on a collection made by himself at the foothills of Araïra Mountain, Morocco. He also observed that this plant was very common in this locality. In the protologue, the author indicated that this plant has an intermediate morphology between V. thapsus L. and V. simplex Hoffmanns. and Link, but differed from both by its spatulate stigma and its tetrandrous or sub-tetrandrous flowers. Murbeck (1927) raised V. thapsus subsp. gaetulum to species rank. However, a few years later, Maire (in Jahandiez and Maire 1934) classified this taxon with the rank of variety in V. simplex , but without any justification for this new recombination. According to African Plant Database (APD) (2022), the accepted name should be V. gaetulum (Maire) Murb. despite Ibn Tattou (2007) also considering V. thapsus subsp. gaetulum an accepted taxon.

During our research, we have found two sheets (MPU000364, MPU000365) corresponding to the original material of this taxon preserved at Herb. MPU, where the main collection of Maire is kept. According to Stafleu and Cowan (1976-1988), if the original material of Dr. R. Maire are preserved at Herb. MPU, there are important sets of duplicates at Herbs Al, CAIM, P, and RAB. Since no holotype was specified, the cited specimens are all syntypes under the Art. 9.6 of the ICN ( Turland et al. 2018). Therefore, the specimen MPU000364 is selected here as the lectotype, because it is the best original material, more complete and informative than the specimen MPU000365, even if this latter is accompanied by a handwritten detailed morphological description by Maire.