THE IDENTITY OF LONCHITIS AURITA AND THE GENERIC NAMES ANISOSORUS AND LONCHITIS

Lonchitis aurita Linnaeus (1753, p. 1078) is based on plate I7 of Plumier's "Tractatus de Filicibus Americanis," but the identity of this plate has always been uncertain. Jenman (i888) incorrectly equated L. aurita with the African species L. pubescens Willd. ex Kaulf., which is now placed in Blotiella. Urban (I925, p. 394) excluded plate 17 and a few other unidentified plates from his list of the plates he identified in Plumier's "Tractatus" and his "Description des Plantes de l'Amerique." Tryon (1962, p. 95) considered L. aurita to be an illegitimate name because he surmised that plate 17 was based on a mixture of two species, the outline of L. hirsuta and the venation of another, unknown species. I have found out that L. aurita, as depicted in plate 17 of Plumier's "Tractatus" (Fig. i), is an immature specimen of Pteris arborea L. This is the only pedate species of Pteris found on Martinique which has aculeate stipes and (in young specimens) exactly the lamina outline, partial soriation, and venation (except that it is biarcuate, not polyarcuate) depicted in plate 17. Plumier (I705, p. I5) found his specimen in the "quartier du Prescheur," which apparently included the northwest or north end of the island, for today Precheur is the name of a town on the northwest coast. His plate is matched by Duss 1542 (US, Fig. 2), from deep ravines of Ajoupa Bouillon, which is on the northeastern part of the island. Stehle 3326 (US) is a similar specimen collected in the Vallee Lorrain, ca. 8 km to the south of the Duss locality. If my assumption about the Prescheur Quarter is correct, all three specimens must have been collected within 20 km of each other, at the very most. The generic name Lonchitis was lectotypified very early by Brongniart in Bory de Saint Vincent (i826, p. 490): "L'espece qui a servi de type a ce genre, le Lonchitis hirsuta, L., est assez commune a la Martinique et dans les autres iles des Antilles . . . On connait encore quelques especes de ce genre, mais beaucoup plus rares . . ." Unfortunately, this publication was overlooked by all subsequent workers until Pichi Sermolli recently cited it in data prepared for the Index Nominum Genericorum. Of the three original species (L. aurita, L. hirsuta, and L. repens), Presl (I836, p. 162) correctly removed the last to Hypolepis. Trevisan (I85I, p. I66) coined the generic name Anisosorus for Pteris laciniata Willd., a taxonomic synonym of L. hirsuta, but he did not provide a generic description, and so the name is a nomen nudum at that point. Had his generic name been validly published, he would have lectotypified Lonchitis on L. aurita inferentially, as that would have been the only species of the three remaining in Lonchitis. John Smith (I875, p. 292) chose L. aurita as lectotype of Lonchitis, and put L. repens in Hypolepis (p. 235) and L. hirsuta in Pteris sensu stricto (p. 297). The fact that Smith misidentified L. aurita with L. (now Blotiella) lindeniana does not nullify his lectotypification, nor does the fact that plate 17 depicts a juvenile specimen. Many species are based on sterile, juvenile, or otherwise atypical specimens, but these can not be overturned as lectotypes so long as the specimens are consistent with the description or diagnosis, which plate 17 is: "Fructificationes dispositae in lineolas, sinubus folii subjectas, lunulatas" (Linnaeus, I754, p. 485). However, he did not overturn Brongniart's earlier choice of lectotype (Art. 8 of the "International Code of Botanical Nomenclature"), and so cannot be followed. Kuhn