Arenaria hybrida Villars

Iamonico, Duilio, 2014, Arenaria tenuifolia versus Arenaria hybrida (Caryophyllaceae): Nomenclatural study and taxonomic implications, Phytotaxa 173 (3), pp. 235-240 : 236

Arenaria hybrida Villars

Villars’ protologue of Arenaria hybrida (1779: 48) consisted of a short diagnosis (“ Arenaria foliis filiformibus ; caule erecto, ramosisimo; floribus decandris ”) and a diagnostic comparison with Vaillant’s A. tenuifolia ( Vaillant 1727: 7) namely “ Affinis nimiúm Arenaria tenuifoliae Vaill. ut fortè sola vairetas ”. Furthermore, an iconography was cited by Villars (1779: 48, “ Tab. XXX. fig. 3 ”), and therefore this is considered to be original material although the illustration was not published in his Prospectus which was little more than an “advertisement” for his later Histoire del plantes de Dauphiné ( Villars 1786, 1787, 1788 − 1789; M. Lefebvre pers. comm.). Arenaria hybrida was listed in the second part of the third volume of Histoire ( Villars 1789: 634−636) with a short diagnosis (similar to that published earlier in the Prospectus) and an associated illustration (“ Pl XLVII Arenaria hybrida ”). Thus, the image cited in 1779 was not published for a decade but clearly was available to Villars when he proposed A. hybrida .

Villars collections are preserved at GRM (see http://sweetgum.nybg.org/ih/herbarium. php?irn=125368) and at LIV (see http://sweetgum.nybg.org/ih/herbarium.php?irn=125168). Unfortunately, no specimens of Arenaria hybrida were found (M. Lefebvre and D. Young, pers. comm.). Thus, the iconography by Villars (1789: “ Pl XLVII Arenaria hybrida ”) that matches the diagnosis ( Villars 1779: 48) and his later description ( Villars 1789: 634), and corresponds szto the current concept of that species (see e.g., Pignatti 1982: 201, Favarger & Montserrat 1990: 244, Halliday 1993: 154), is here designated as the lectotype of A. hybrida (see below).