Impatiens auriculata Wight (1837: 8)

Singh, Rajeev Kumar, 2016, Typification of thirty six names of thirty five recognized taxa in Impatiens (Balsaminaceae), endemic to Western Ghats, Phytotaxa 268 (3), pp. 167-180 : 167

1. Impatiens auriculata Wight (1837: 8) .

Type citation:—“Hab. Courtallum on branches of trees, flowering in August and September.”

Type:— INDIA. Tamil Nadu: Tirunelveli district, Courtallum, September 1835, Wight 168 (lectotype E00174019 !, designated here; isolectotypes E00174020 !, E00174021 ! and K000694881 !) .

Distribution:— India, endemic (Kerala and Tamil Nadu [ Vivekananthan et al. 1997, Rathakrishnan 2005, Bhaskar 2012]).

Notes:— Wight (1837) described Impatiens auriculata based on plants collected from Courtallum, but no type was indicated. In the protologue, he mentioned only the precise locality but did not provide the date of collection, number, and name of herbarium where specimens housed. Four herbarium sheets of I. auriculata collected by Wight from Courtallum were traced (E00174019 ‒ 00174021 and K000694881). Of these, E00174019, is chosen here as the lectotype because the illustration in the protologue is based on it, annotation is in Wight’s hand (‘RW. mss’) and the illustration of a flower is attached to the sheet.