Taxonomy

Plant species established on the basis of early garden cultivation may have lacked the original information about their native geographical origin. Crambe suecica was originally described from its 18th-century cultivation in the Chelsea Physic Garden in London, raised from seeds without provenance that were sent from Saint Petersburg. This species has been misunderstood as native to the Baltic Sea coasts and, consequently, misinterpreted as a taxonomic synonym of C. maritima. We infer from plant morphology and the history of Russian botany that seeds of C. suecica were originally collected by Johann Christian Buxbaum in 1726 when he travelled across the Ottoman Empire and then-Russian Transcaucasia, most likely in the Gilan or Mazandaran provinces of present-day Iran. According to the morphology of its type specimen, this taxon represents a glabrous variant of C. orientalis and is hereby reduced to a synonym of the latter species. The name C. pinnatifida has been misapplied to a species native to south-eastern Europe and the north-western Caucasus. This species name is nomenclaturally superfluous and illegitimate because its protologue includes a reference to C. suecica, which is to be treated as its type-bearing synonym. This case underlines the importance of historical research in nomenclatural studies, which may be required to reach a correct taxonomic decision.

In an age of gene editing and artificial intelligence, taxonomy—the science of naming, describing, and classifying living organisms—can seem old-fashioned, even quaint [...]

Ten new species of Lonchaeidae in the genera Lonchaea Fallen and Silba Macquart are described, nine from the Australasia–Oceania realm—Papua New Guinea (7 species), Solomon Islands (1 species), and Sulawesi (1 species)—and one from Sumatra in the Indo-Malayan realm. The new species are Lonchaea bacchusi sp. nov., Lonchaea herzogi sp. nov., Lonchaea morobe sp. nov., Lonchaea spenceri sp. nov., Lonchaea sulawesi sp. nov., Silba guineai sp. nov., Silba honiara sp. nov., Silba ismayi sp. nov., Silba kokoda sp. nov., and Silba papua sp. nov. The male genitalia are illustrated, and the diagnostic features that distinguish these species are presented. The male genitalia of Lonchaea uniseta Malloch, 1930, from Samoa are described and illustrated for the first time, and the male genitalia of two species from Micronesia, Lonchaea belua McAlpine, 1964, and Lonchaea sabroski McAlpine, 1964, are illustrated for the first time. A checklist of the Lonchaeidae of Papua New Guinea is provided.