Syzygium gardneri Thwaites (1859: 117)

Singh, Rajeev Kumar & Arigela, Ravi Kiran, 2020, Lectotypifications and new synonyms in Indian Syzygium (Myrtaceae), Phytotaxa 429 (3), pp. 200-216 : 209-210

5. Syzygium gardneri Thwaites (1859: 117) . = Eugenia gardneri (Thwaites) Beddome (1872: 108) . Lectotype:— SRI LANKA. Central province, Deltota, July 1856, G.H.K. Thwaites 2496 (PDA00002556!, inadvertently designated by Kostermans 1981; isolectotypes BR0000005230419!, GH00071328!, FR0036256!, K000821408!, K000821409!, MEL2436226!, MH00002892!, MPU1264019!, P05208761!, P05208763!, P05208766!).

= Syzygium dhaneshianum Ratheesh, Shareef & Nandakumar in Ratheesh et al. (2014: 1056). Holotype:— INDIA. Kerala: Kannur district, Nedumpoyil Ghat , 600 m, 26 Feb. 2013, Narayanan, Nandakumar & Satheesh 1519 (MH; isotypes TBGT!), syn. nov.

Distribution:— Sri Lanka and India, Western Ghats (Goa, Karnataka, Kerala and Tamil Nadu).

Notes:— Kostermans (1981) cited the type information for the name Syzygium gardneri Thwaites as “Typus: Deltota, July 1856, fl., C.P. 2496 (PDA)”, but did not mentioned remaining syntypes or isotypes. Though in doing so, he unwittingly designated the lectotype for the name S. gardneri Thwaites (1859) as per 9.10 of the ICN ( Turland et al. 2018). Further, eleven duplicates—consequently isolectotypes —were traced.

In the protologue of Syzygium dhaneshianum, Ratheesh et al. (2014) cited the holotype specimen in MH, but still they have not submitted the holotype to MH. They misinterpreted the characters of S. gardneri and differentiated S. dhaneshianum in having habit up to 10 m high medium sized tree (vs. upto 20 m high large tree), bark greyishbrown (vs. pale grey or cream-brown), blaze pale pinkish brown (vs. pale pink), twigs terete, green (vs. terete or sub-tetragonous, pale cream), lateral nerves prominent only on lower surface (vs. slightly elevated on both surfaces), petioles 0.8–1 cm long (vs. 1–1.5 cm long), inflorescence strictly terminal, 3–4 cm long (vs. axillary and terminal, upto 5 cm long), flowers yellowish-white, 0.8–1 cm (vs. white, 0.3–0.4 cm across), hypanthium goblet shaped (funnel shaped), filaments 4–4.5 mm long (vs. 2–2.5 mm long) and fruits broadly obovoid to sub-globose, about 2.5 cm across (vs. ellipsoid-obovoid, 0.5–0.8 cm across), but in S. gardneri the habit is medium sized to large size tree, lateral nerves prominent on lower surface only, petioles 0.8–1.5 cm long, inflorescence in terminal and subterminal axillary, 2.5–6 cm long cymes, flowers 0.7–1 cm across, filaments 2.5–4.5 mm long and fruits 1.2–2.5 cm across, ellipsoid-obovoid to sub-globose berries. After study of isotype specimens, coloured plate and description of S. dhaneshianum , we find it very similar to S. gardneri . All the characters of S. dhaneshianum given in the protologue lie within the range of S. gardneri .