The genus Shivparvatia Pusalkar & D.K. Singh was described in 2015 and the specimen J.D. Hooker 11 deposited in K (K000742193) was designated as the lectotype of its type species S. glanduligera (Edgew.) Pusalkar & D.K. Singh (≡ Arenaria glanduligera Edgew.). Nevertheless, J.D. Hooker 11 (K000742193) is actually the type of S. ciliolata (Edgew.) Pusalkar & D.K. Singh (≡ Arenaria ciliolata Edgew.). Thus the lectotypification of S. glanduligera was problematic and a re-lectotypification for this species is needed. One of the syntypes of S. glanduligera collected from Kashmir (H. Falconer s.n., K000742189) is selected here as its lectotype. Morphologically, S. ciliolata and S. glanduligera can be easily distinguished from each other by their different morphology of indumentum, disc gland and sepals, as well as the color of petals.

Arenaria, nomenclature, taxonomy

The genus Arenaria L. s.l. includes over 300 species of herbs widely distributed from Northern Temperate to arctic regions (McNeill 1962; Wu et al. 2001). It was divided into ten subgenera traditionally based on the morphology of sepals and petals, as well as the number of styles and lobes at the top of capsules (McNeill 1962). A series of recent molecular phylogenetic studies have made great progress in clarifying the circumscription of Arenaria s.l. (Harbaugh et al. 2010; Greenberg and Donoghue 2011; Sadeghian et al. 2015), and resulted in the disintegration of this large genus and some of its subgenera or sections were elevated as independent genera (Pusalkar and Singh 2015; Sadeghian et al. 2015).

Based on phylogenetic results, Sadeghian et al. (2015) raised the subgenus Solitaria McNeill of Arenaria s.l. to generic rank and described it as a new genus Solitaria (McNeill) Sadeghian & Zarre, with three species of subgenus Solitaria sampled in their study transferred to this new genus, viz. Solitaria ciliolata (Edgew.) Sadeghian & Zarre, S. glanduligera (Edgew.) Sadeghian & Zarre, and S. stracheyi (Edgew.) Sadeghian & Zarre. They also lectotypified these species except S. glanduligera, but three syntypes of its basionym, viz. Arenaria glanduligera Edgew., were cited.

On the other hand, Pusalkar and Singh (2015) elevated the subgenus Solitaria to be a new genus and described it as Shivparvatia Pusalkar & D.K. Singh three months earlier than Sadeghian et al. (2015). Thus the generic name Shivparvatia has priority in taxonomy. Pusalkar and Singh (2015) also transferred the three species of the subgenus Solitaria to their new genus, viz. Shivparvatia ciliolata (Edgew.) Pusalkar & D.K. Singh, S. glanduligera (Edgew.) Pusalkar & D.K. Singh, S. stracheyi (Edgew.) Pusalkar & D.K. Singh. They further designated the species S. glanduligera as the type of Shivparvatia and lectotypified S. glanduligera. However, they didn’t lectotypify the other two species.

In Pusalkar and Singh (2015), the Indian specimen J.D. Hooker 11 deposited in K (K000742193, Fig. 1A) was designated as the lectotype of Shivparvatia glanduligera, and the other three specimens labeled as GH00353887, K000742194 (Fig. 1C) and K000742195 (Fig. 1B) were cited as isolectotypes of the species. After careful examination of the above mentioned specimens and relevant literature, we found that the four specimens cited in Pusalkar and Singh (2015) all represented S. ciliolata rather than S. glanduligera. The collection J.D. Hooker 11 was actually the type of S. ciliolata (Edgeworth & Hooker, 1874), and the two specimens K000742194 and GH00353887 had been designated as the lectotype and isolectotype of S. ciliolata, respectively, by Sadeghian et al. (2015). The last specimen K000742195 (J.F. Duthie 2760, Fig. 1B) collected from Kumaun actually doesn’t share the same collector, collection number and locality with the other three specimens cited in Pusalkar and Singh (2015).

Figure 1. 

Specimens of Solitaria ciliolata (Edgew.) Sadeghian & Zarre A Isolectotype of S. ciliolata (J.D. Hooker 11, K000742193) B J.E. Duthie 2760 (K000742195) C lectotype of S. ciliolata (J.D. Hooker 11, K000742194; designated by Sadeghian et al. 2015).

It is therefore obvious that the lectotypification of Shivparvatia glanduligera by Pusalkar and Singh (2015) is problematic, thus a re-lectotypification of this species should be conducted. The basionym of S. glanduligera, viz. Arenaria glanduligera, was published based on three specimens: H. Falconer s.n. (K000742189, Fig. 2); J.D. Hooker s.n. (K, Fig. 3); R. Strachey & J.E. Winterbottom s.n. (K, Fig. 4) (Edgeworth and Hooker 1874). We therefore reselected one specimen from the syntypes of S. glanduligera as its lectotype. As only the specimen H. Falconer s.n. has been assigned a barcode number (K000742189), it is therefore selected.

The authors are indebted to the curators of the herbaria E, GH and K for providing specimen images. We also thank Dr. Ian Turner from Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, for providing specimen images of Arenaria glanduligera. This study was financially supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant no. 31872646) and the Natural Science Foundation of Guangdong Province, China (2019A1515011695).