Research Article |
Corresponding author: Andreas Berger ( andi.berger@univie.ac.at ) Academic editor: Petra De Block
© 2018 Andreas Berger.
This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY 4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.
Citation:
Berger A (2018) Rediscovery of Chamisso’s type specimens of Hawaiian Psychotria (Rubiaceae, Psychotrieae) in the herbarium of the Natural History Museum, Vienna. PhytoKeys 114: 27-42. https://doi.org/10.3897/phytokeys.114.29426
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Between 1815 and 1818, Count Nikolai Romanzoff funded an expedition of the Russian brig Rurik. Besides their primary goal to discover the Northeast Passage, their aim was to collect scientific specimens, for which the botanist Adelbert von Chamisso and the entomologist Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz were commissioned. On the Hawaiian Islands, they collected two unknown endemic species that Chamisso and Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal later described as Coffea kaduana and C. mariniana, both now assigned to the large and complex genus Psychotria (Rubiaceae, Psychotrieae). The private herbarium of Chamisso is now preserved at the Komarov Botanical Institute, St. Petersburg (LE). In the late 1930s, their type collections of Psychotria kaduana and P. mariniana were sent out on loan for study, but got lost in transit during the aftermath of the Second World War. No extant original material was found during a subsequent revision of Hawaiian Psychotria and both species were consequently neotypified. These neotypes are superseded by the here-reported rediscovery of original material in the herbarium of Stephan Ladislaus Endlicher preserved at the Natural History Museum, Vienna (W) and these specimens are here designated as lectotypes. As both are rather fragmentary, the former neotypes are additionally designated as epitypes. In addition, some peculiarities and details of the expedition and its collections are noted.
Lectotypification, Psychotria , Hawaii, Chamisso, herbarium history
Between August 1815 and August 1818, Count Nikolai Romanzoff (1754–1826), Chancellor of the Russian Empire and a patron of science, commissioned an expedition around the world on the Russian brig Rurik under the command of captain and cartographer Otto von Kotzebue (1787–1846). Besides their primary goal to find the Northeast Passage from the Bering Strait to the Atlantic Ocean, their aim was to collect scientific specimens of all kinds, for which the botanist and famous poet Ludolf Karl Adelbert von Chamisso (1781–1838) and the zoologist Johann Friedrich von Eschscholtz (1793–1831), as well as the artist Louis Choris (1795–1828), were hired. A detailed description of Chamisso’s life, works and the Romanzoffian Expedition was given by
Whilst the expedition was not able to realise their nautical goal, they brought together ample collections of plants, animals and other objects, largely from the Pacific region. In his first report to Romanzoff,
In June 1819, Chamisso became an adjunct (“Zweiter Kustos”) in the Berlin Botanical Garden, at that time located in Schöneberg. Amongst other tasks, he was commissioned with creating a garden herbarium, a duty he increasingly neglected in favour of working on his collections from the Romanzoffian expedition (
In that series, they described ca. 60 new genera and 1,150 species (http://www.ipni.org; retrieved June 2018). A large portion (ca. 50 gen. and 700 spp.) of these names was based on material collected during the expedition, but other specimens such as Brazilian collections by Friedrich Sellow were also included (
Chamisso presented a complete set of specimens from the expedition to the Berlin Herbarium. Unfortunately, these specimens were destroyed during a bomb raid that hit the herbarium during the Second World War (
In 1840, two years after Chamisso’s death, his private herbarium containing 10,000 to 12,000 species (
The genus Psychotria (Rubiaceae, Psychotrieae) is a speciose pantropical group, comprising mainly understorey shrubs from wet forests. Due to the large number of morphologically similar species and long-unclear generic boundaries with respect to related genera, Psychotria was long perceived as a taxonomic nightmare (e.g.
As currently circumscribed, the genus Psychotria, as well as the tribe Psychotrieae, has its centre of diversity in the Paleotropics and harbours at least 1,600 species. Within the Rubiaceae, the group is largely diagnosed by the presence of raphides, valvate corolla aestivation and the frequent occurrence of heterostyly (subfamily Rubioideae), as well as by a predominantly woody habit, mostly terminal inflorescences, single ovules per locule and predominantly fleshy and drupaceous fruits (Psychotrieae alliance). Within the alliance, a grey or reddish-brown drying colour, caducous stipules, inconspicuous whitish flowers, pyrenes without preformed germination slits and seeds with an alcohol-soluble red seed-coat pigment generally characterise the Psychotrieae and the genus Psychotria. The opposite character states are variously found in Palicourea, as well as in other Palicoureeae (e.g.
Psychotria is the only genus of the Psychotrieae and Palicoureeae that reached the Hawaiian Islands, where it forms a characteristic component of the native mesic to wet rain forests (
Based on the specimens collected on Oahu, Chamisso and Schlechtendal described the first two Hawaiian species of Psychotria under the names Coffea kaduana Cham. & Schltdl. and C. mariniana Cham. & Schltdl. (
More recently, Seymour
The Romanzoffian Expedition was amongst the first scientific expeditions that touched the Hawaiian Islands and studied their native flora. As mentioned above, they collected the first specimens of the species currently known as Psychotria kaduana and P. mariniana. Type specimens of both should be expected at LE and several other herbaria (see above). However, no such specimens were catalogued in the LE digital herbarium (https://www.binran.ru/collections; retrieved June 2018) or the JSTOR Global Plants database (http://plants.jstor.org; retrieved June 2018). Likewise, no specimens are extant in the Berlin Herbarium and none has been found in the private herbarium of Schlechtendal at HAL (
As part of his studies on various groups of Pacific Rubiaceae, Fosberg was the last taxonomist to see Chamisso’s type collections of P. kaduana and P. mariniana at LE (
Although the present study cannot satisfy Sohmer’s hopes for a rediscovery of the lost types from LE, the discovery of duplicates of these in the collection of the herbarium of the Natural History Museum (W) is reported here. These specimens are original material, so they supersede the neotypes (ICN, Art. 9.19) and are designated here as lectotypes. In order to maintain nomenclatural stability, the neotypes of
Coffea
kaduana
Cham. & Schltdl., Linnaea 4(1): 33–35, 1829a. ≡ Straussia kaduana (Cham. & Schltdl.) A.Gray, Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts 4: 43, 1860. Type. USA. Hawaii: Oahu, Southern Waianae Range, < 730 m alt., 7–10 Oct 1817, or, Southern Koolau Range, < 730 m alt., 12 Oct 1817, L.K.A. von Chamisso s.n. (lectotype, designated here: W-Endl. 0065914!); Oahu, Kahuauli Ridge, 500–750 m alt., 17 Dec 1931, E. Christophersen & E. Hume 1426 (epitype, designated here: BISH barcode 1010994!,
Psychotria kaduana (sect. Straussia (DC.) Fosberg) is the most widely distributed species of Hawaiian Psychotria. It is found on the islands of Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai and Maui. It possesses a wide ecological amplitude resulting in considerable morphological variation and many local forms, some of which have received taxonomic recognition. However, it was shown that these all intergrade and are best treated as a single polymorphic species. A detailed synonymy and description of P. kaduana including lists of specimens, distribution maps, drawings and photos illustrating morphological variations are found in
The protologue of Psychotria kaduana lacks information about the etymology of the name, but a person called “Kadu” is frequently mentioned in Chamisso’s publications. While visiting the Aur Atoll (Ratak Chain, Marshall Islands) in February 1817, the Rurik was approached by Kadu, a native of Woleai (“Ulea”), an atoll in the eastern Caroline Islands, Federated States of Micronesia. Four years before, a storm bore Kadu’s boat far to the east and, after months at sea, he finally reached the Ratak Chain. With curiosity and the intention of being dropped off closer to home, he joined the expedition and became a close friend of Chamisso and his prime source of ethnographic information on Micronesia. After visiting distant places such as Alaska and Hawaii, the expedition returned to the Ratak Chain in November 1817, where Kadu finally settled in the Wotje Atoll (
Chamisso wrote with great admiration about his “companion, teacher and dearest friend” Kadu, and dedicated to him the genus Kadua Cham. & Schltdl., a group of Pacific Rubiaceae-Spermacoceae with its centre of diversity on the Hawaiian Islands (
The protologue of Psychotria kaduana gives the type information as “In nemorosis montium Insulae O-Wahu A. D. 1817 legimus” (
Between 7 and 10 October 1817, Chamisso explored the “western mountain range of the island” (
At the Herbarium of the National History Museum (W), a peculiar specimen of P. kaduana is preserved (Figure
Lectotype of Psychotria kaduana (Cham. & Schltdl.) Fosberg collected by L.K.A. von Chamisso during the Romanzoffian Expedition in 1817 (L.K.A. von Chamisso s.n., W-Endl. 0065914). The sheet originates from the private herbarium of S.L. Endlicher, now preserved at the Herbarium of the Natural History Museum, Vienna. Photo: Courtesy of the Natural History Museum, Vienna.
Endlicher, however, never visited the Hawaiian Islands, so the respective specimen was not collected by him. The age of the specimen, the name and the locality on the label indicate that it could be original material of Psychotria kaduana. Comparison with specimens at LE (e.g.
Concerning the history of the specimen, Endlicher was professor of botany, director of the Botanical Garden and the Botanical Museum of Vienna from 1839–1849 (
The rediscovery of a type specimen of P. kaduana at W supersedes the neotypification of
Coffea
mariniana
Cham. & Schltdl., Linnaea 4(1): 35–36, 1829a. ≡ Straussia mariniana (Cham. & Schltdl.) A.Gray, Proc. Amer. Acad. Arts 4: 43, 1860. Type. USA. Hawaii: Oahu, Southern Koolau Range, < 730 m alt., 28 Nov to 14 Dec [probably 8–9 Dec] 1816, L.K.A. von Chamisso s.n. (lectotype, designated here: W-Endl. 0066414!); Kaeleku, west branch near trail, 1 Jun 1933, G.W. Russ s.n. (epitype, designated here: BISH barcode 1010995!,
Psychotria mariniana (sect. Straussia) is widespread and found on the islands of Kauai, Oahu, Molokai, Lanai and Maui. The species is variable in morphology and habitat preferences and grows in both wet and dry forests (
The protologue of Psychotria mariniana lacks information about the etymology of the name, but the species appears to be named in honour of the Spanish Don Francisco de Paulo Marín (1774–1837), who is mentioned in Chamisso’s expedition report (1836a: 218, 340ff). Initially an apprentice on a Spanish ship associated with the Malaspina Expedition, he deserted and jumped ship at Nootka Sound (Canada) in 1792. According to Marín’s own account, he was then tricked aboard a ship in San Francisco and kidnapped to Hawaii (
Marín settled on the island of Oahu and soon became an influential advisor to the Hawaiian King Kamehameha I, a wealthy merchant, horticulturalist and introducer of many useful plants and animals such as pineapple (
The protologue gives the type information as “Legimus in nemorosis montium O-Wahu A. D. 1816” (
Chamisso made his first botanical collections on the island of Oahu on an “old crater behind Honolulu”, which became known as Diamond Head. He subsequently focused his collecting efforts on the forested valleys around Honolulu. Once, he also collected at higher elevations, for which he made an excursion on 8–9 December 1816. He ascended a valley behind Honolulu, crossed the ridge of the Koolau Range and descended towards the coast. The next day, he returned through a much higher mountain pass to the west (
In a similar case as described above, a type specimen of Psychotria mariniana is preserved in the private herbarium of Endlicher at W (Figure
Lectotype of Psychotria mariniana (Cham. & Schltdl.) Fosberg collected by L.K.A. von Chamisso during the Romanzoffian Expedition in 1817 (L.K.A. von Chamisso s.n., W-Endl. 0066414). The sheet originates from the private herbarium of S.L. Endlicher, now preserved at the Herbarium of the Natural History Museum, Vienna. Photo: Courtesy of the Natural History Museum, Vienna.
As for Psychotria kaduana, the rediscovered original material of P. mariniana supersedes the neotype designated by
Michael Kiehn (University of Vienna) and Charlotte M. Taylor (Missouri Botanical Garden) are thanked for many helpful comments and for their meticulous proofreading. Further thanks go to Anton Igersheim (Herbarium of the Natural History Museum, Vienna) for allowing access to the collections as well as for permission to reproduce photos of the type specimens. Heimo Rainer (Herbarium of the Natural History Museum, Vienna) is acknowledged for help with digitising the type specimens. Open access funding was provided by the University of Vienna.