The world checklist of Saldinia (Lasiantheae, Rubiaceae), four lectotypifications, and notes about nomenclature and distribution

ABSTRACT

A taxonomic revision of the mostly Malagasy genus Saldinia (Rubiaceae, Rubioideae, Lasiantheae) was conducted by Bremekamp 66 years ago. However, no holotype was selected for four of his 22 species and no distribution maps of these species were presented. The objectives of this study are, therefore, a) to produce a world checklist of the species of Saldinia with information about the type specimens, b) to lectotypify four Saldinia species, and c) to provide new distribution maps of the 22 described species. A total of 966 specimens of Saldinia (including 27 types) from the P herbarium were examined together with the protologues of all recognized species. The geographic coordinates of the 22 species recognized by Bremekamp were gathered from the specimen labels. We present a world checklist of Saldinia and four lectotypifications for Saldinia axillaris, S. acuminata, S. pallida, and S. stenophylla, and provided new distribution maps for all 22 species of Saldinia. The checklist will serve as a basis for future systematic studies in Saldinia and the species distribution maps will be useful for the ongoing taxonomic revision of the genus.

KEYWORDS:

• Comoro Islands
• Lasiantheae
• lectotypification
• Madagascar
• nomenclature
• Rubiaceae

Acknowledgements

We thank the staff at G, K, BR, and MO for their assistance in responding to our inquiries and supplying images of herbarium specimens. The MNHN gives access to the collections in the framework of the RECOLNAT national research infrastructure. We also thank Xavier Aubriot for his comments on a previous version of the article.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

Conceptualization: LMER, BR, TLP, SGR, FJ. Data curation and analysis: LMER, CS, VDA, FJ. Drafting of the manuscript: LMER. All coauthors contributed to the writing of the manuscript and agreed on the final version.

Data availability statement

Data are available in the Supplementary Material. URL links for the digitized herbarium specimens are provided in Suppl. Mat. 1. Other data are available from the corresponding author upon request.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed online at https://doi.org/10.1080/23818107.2024.2351992