The Gerire Hills, SE Ethiopia: ecology and phytogeographical position of an additional local endemic, Anacampseros specksii (Anacampserotaceae)

ABSTRACT

Anacampseros specksii Dreher (Anacampserotaceae, in Flora of Ethiopia and Eritrea in Portulacaceae), was described in 2016 from plants grown from seeds collected from Bale, SE Ethiopia. The species was not included in the paper on the Gerire Hills published by the present authors in Webbia in 2018. A. specksii is here considered to be another narrow endemic species in the Gerire Hills, belonging to the group of species that grows on the edges of Monte Ellot and Bur Caddas on sandstone rocks eroding into loose gravel. Anacampseros vespertina, the only other species of Anacampseros in NE tropical Africa, grows on limestone gravel in Somalia near the Indian Ocean, whilst the south tropical African species, A. rhodesica, grows on granite rocks in Zimbabwe, Botswana, Mozambique and South Africa. The conservation assessment in 2016 for A. specksii was Data Deficient (DD) because only one population had been observed and the number of individuals is not known; this assessment is here discussed and maintained.

KEYWORDS:

• Avonia
• cremnophyte
• disjunct distribution
• El Kere
• endemism
• lithophyte
• succulent
• Western Ogaden

Acknowledgements

The authors are grateful to Hagen Dreher, Neißeaue, Germany, for providing additional information on the type locality of Anacampseros specksii, to Ernst Specks, Erkelenz, for permission to reproduce his photograph in Figure 3, and to Prof. Mats Thulin, Uppsala University (the author of A. vespertina, which he described from his own collections from Somalia), for his opinion on the taxonomic status of A. specksii and the keepers of ETH, GLM and LZ for looking for material of A. specksii in their collections.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Carlsberg Foundation, which funds scientific research associated with Danish science and scientists [CF16-0040, CF17-0165, CF18-0093].