Pinguicula benedicta Barnhart

Domínguez, Yoannis, 2024, Clarifying the status of Caribbean Pinguicula (Lentibulariaceae) type specimens, Phytotaxa 638 (3), pp. 247-256 : 248

Pinguicula benedicta Barnhart in Britton (1920: 110).

Type (lectotype, designated by Greuter & Rankin Rodríguez 2022: 123):— CUBA. [Prov. Holguín]: Bank of stream in soil, trail, Camp La Barga to Camp San Benito , Oriente , 23 February 1910, J.A. Shafer 4025 (A barcode 00093357!; image of the lectotype available at https://s3.amazonaws.com/huhwebimages/AFF6F6B7193F4F2/type/full/93357.jpg) .

= Pinguicula caryophyllacea Casper (2004: 8) . Type (holotype):— CUBA. Prov. Holguín: Mun. Moa, La Veguita, orillas del río Limones , laterita, 400 m, 20April 1981, J.Bisse, M.A. Díaz, H. Dietrich, L.Lepper, B. Mory & C. Sánchez HFC-44580 (JE barcode JE00025333!, isotypes B barcode B100273052!, HAJB! [two sheets]; image of the holotype available at https://je.jacq.org/JE00025333).

= Pinguicula toldensis Casper (2007: 8) . Type (holotype):— CUBA. Prov. Holguín: Mun. Moa, Cuchillas de Moa, Alto de la Galinga , parte alta de la Meseta del Toldo, 890 m, 74°54’530’’O, 20°31’753’’N, 23 March 2005, J. Guitiérrez, H. Hilger, E. Köhler & K. Zoglauer HFC-83298 (JE barcode JE00025330!, isotypes B, HAJB?; image of the holotype available at https://je.jacq.org/JE00025330).

Note:—The protologue of P. benedicta does explicitly show a single collection as type, Shafer 4025 (22–26 February 1910); however, Barnhart (in Britton 1920) did not use the term “ holotype ” or mention any herbarium housing the specimen(s). Casper (1966, 2019) stated that the “ holotype ” from NY was destroyed in 1943 at B during World War II when in loan. The family Lentibulariaceae is not listed among the material saved from the General Herbarium ( Hiepko 1987), however, there is no record that this specimen was at B at any point. Moreover, it is not among the type specimens photographed at B before 1943 and kept in the collection of the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago ( Merrill 1943, Grimé & Plowman 1986). Although Barnhart’s types are mostly in NY, there is no record of Pinguicula specimens collected by Shafer and kept in NY (Matthew Pace, pers. comm., 15 November 2021); therefore, no information is known to support Casper’s assumption. Shafer’s collections from Cuba are currently housed in several herbariums, mainly in the United States of the America and the only specimen traced that fits the one indicated as type of P. benedicta is at A (00093357!) and is dated 23 February 1910. It has no original handwritten label and the typed label has the annotation “type”. This specimen has been speculated to be the “ holotype?” ( Shimai 2017) or pointed out as original material ( Schlauer 2019) and finally designated as the lectotype by Greuter & Rankin Rodríguez (2022). I agree with the typification, however, it is worth noticing that there is the possibility that the specimen at A could be the holotype. The citation of the date that appears in the protologue was corrected according to Art. 9.2 of the ICN ( Turland et al. 2018). Additionally, since Casper (2003, 2004, 2007, 2019) was unable to clarify the nomenclature status of P. benedicta due to the lack of a type specimen, he described nine species from material traditionally regarded as P. benedicta . Among them, P. toldensis was treated as a later synonym of P. caryophyllacea by Casper himself ( Casper 2019). Nonetheless, since the oldest name was fixed by the designation of a lectotype, P. caryophyllacea was synonimized under P. benedicta ( Greuter & Rankin Rodríguez 2022) , because from the species within the “ P. benedicta -group”, it is the one that better fit Barnhart’s species concept and the designated lectotype. The isotype of P. toldensis supposedly housed at HAJB was not found and is presumed lost.