(3017) Proposal to conserve the name Gymnosporia royleana (Celastraceae)

(3017) Gymnosporia royleana M.A. Lawson in Hooker, Fl. Brit. India 1: 620. Feb 1875 [Angiosp.: Celastr.], nom. cons. prop.

Lectotypus (hic designatus): “Affghania” [Afghanistan], Griffith 1245 (K barcode K001325915 [digital image!]; isolectotypus: K001325917 [digital image!]).

Wallich (Numer. List: 151, no. 4317. 1831) listed “C[elastrus]. Royleana Wall.”, based on a Royle collection. Subsequently, Royle (Ill. Bot. Himal. Mts.: 167. 1835) recorded “C. spinosus nob. Ic. ined. t. 73”. Both, being nomina nuda, are not validly published names. However, Celastrus spinosus was later validated by Boissier (Fl. Orient. 2: 11. 1872).

Lawson (in Hooker, Fl. Brit. India 1: 620. 1875), while revising the family Celastraceae, transferred a few members of Celastrus to Gymnosporia. He thus inadvertently validly published Gymnosporia royleana seemingly based on the invalid “C. royleanus Wall.” Lawson (l.c.) also included C. spinosus Royle ex Boiss. as a synonym. His choice in accepting G. royleana was seemingly purely based on what he considered to be priority of publication. This nomenclatural error under current rules made G. royleana a superfluous illegitimate name under Art. 52.1 of the ICN (Turland & al. in Regnum Veg. 2018) as Lawson (l.c.) should have adopted the then-available epithet “spinosa”. It is thus automatically typified by the type of C. spinosus Boiss. (Art. 7.5). Boissier (l.c.) cited two gatherings from Afghanistan (“Griffith pl. exs. 1245! et Herb. East lnd. Comp. n^o 1991!”). During our search for type specimens, we traced eight specimens, six at K [barcodes K001325915, K001325916, K001325917, K001325918, K001325919, K001325920] and one each at CAL [No. 86591] and DD [No. 1991]. The sheet K001325915 is well preserved, precisely matching with the protologue, bearing one flowering and a fruiting twig of a single gathering [1245] without any confusing and illegible labels. Hence, it is selected above as the lectotype; the specimen K001325917 appears to be a duplicate of it.

Cufodontis (in Senckenberg. Biol. 43: 313. 1962) transferred Gymnosporia royleana to Maytenus as M. royleana Cufod., which is a legitimate name, as the existence of M. spinosa (Griseb.) Lourteig & O'Donell (in Natura (Buenos Aires) 1: 188. 1955) precluded the adoption of Boissier's epithet ‘spinosa’ in Maytenus. Raju & Babu (in Bull. Bot. Surv. India 10: 348. 1969) opined that Kanjilal (Forest Fl. School Circle: 68. 1901) had validated Celastrus royleanus. However, C. royleanus Wall. ex Kanjilal is also an illegitimate name as C. spinosus was included in its synonymy.

The species known as Gymnosporia royleana is distributed in Afghanistan, India, Pakistan, Tibet, and West Himalaya (POWO, 2023 https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:161429-1). Since the inception of the name, G. royleana has been frequently used in more than 50 research works. Some of the major floristic/revisionary studies are Collett, Fl. Siml.: 87–88. 1902; Duthie, Fl. Gangetic Plain 1: 149. 1903; Parker, Forest Fl. Punjab: 81. 1915; Bamber, Fl. Punjab: 118. 1916; Osmaston, Forest Fl. Kumaon: 97. 1927; Kitamura, Fl. Afghanistan: 265. 1960; Siddiqi, Fl. Pakistan 109: 1–15. 1977; Ramamurthy in Singh & al., Fl. India 5: 125. 2000; Jordaan & van Wyk in Taxon 55: 521. 2006; Liu & Funston in Wu & Raven, Fl. China 11: 476. 2008; Simmons & al. in Syst. Bot. 48: 288. 2023. The species is also known to be medicinally important and has been reported in several ethnobotanical and medicinal studies (Shinwari & Khan in Pakistan J. Forest. 48: 63–88. 1998; Parinitha & al. in Indian J. Tradit. Knowl. 3: 48. 2004; Ishtiaq & al. in Asian J. Pl. Sci. 5: 390–396. 2006; Ahmad & al. in J. Ethnobiol. Ethnomed. 10: 36. 2014; Khan & al. in W. Indian Med. J. 68: 121–138. 2019; Saboon & al. in Iranian J. Sci. Technol., Trans. A, Sci. 43: 15–23. 2019). The name is also being used in global online databases such as GBIF (https://www.gbif.org/species/3793980), POWO (https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:161429-1), Catalogue of Life (https://www.catalogueoflife.org/data/taxon/6L7JG), TROPICOS (https://tropicos.org/name/50283396) and WFO Plant list (https://wfoplantlist.org/plant-list/taxon/wfo-0000713036-2023-06).

Initially Gymnosporia and Maytenus were treated as separate genera (Bentham & Hooker, Gen. Pl. 1: 359. 1862; Loesener in Engler & Prantl, Nat. Pflanzenfam., ed. 2, 20b: 109. 1942). Considering Loesener's separation of these genera to be artificial, Exell & Mendonca (in Bol. Soc. Brot. 26: 223. 1952) synonymized Gymnosporia under Maytenus, which was followed by other workers (Exell in Kew Bull. 8: 104. 1953; Blakelock in Kew Bull. 11: 237. 1956, 12: 37. 1957; Marais in Bothalia 7: 381. 1960). The circumscription of both genera has been a long-standing question. However, recent morphological and molecular phylogenetic studies support a distinction between these two genera, and thus Gymnosporia has been reinstated as a separate genus (Jordaan & van Wyk in S. African J. Bot. 65: 177. 1999; Simmons & al. in Amer. J. Bot. 88: 321. 2001; Simmons & al. in Molec. Phylogen. Evol. 19: 363. 2001). In addition, Gymnosporia is confined to Old World countries including India (Jordaan & van Wyk, l.c. 1999) and all Old World spiny species of Maytenus were transferred to Gymnosporia (Jordaan & van Wyk, l.c. 2006: 515).

At present, Maytenus yimenensis H. Shao (in Bull. Bot. Res., Harbin 20: 126. 2000) is treated as a synonym of Gymnosporia royleana (POWO, 2023 https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:1020820-1). Thus, the specific epithet ‘yimenensis’ may be adopted to make a new name G. yimenensis. However, in view of the reasons set out above, introduction of the specific epithet ‘yimenensis’ for the well-established G. royleana would disrupt nomenclatural stability causing substantial confusion. We, therefore, propose to conserve the illegitimate Gymnosporia royleana M.A. Lawson as per Art. 14.1 & 14.2 of ICN.