Summary
The incompletely known Crotalaria trifoliolata Baker f. (Leguminosae subfam. Papilionoideae) has been rediscovered in the field. For 120 years, it has been known only from a fragmentary holotype with uncertain collecting locality. The habit and height of the plant, the pods and the seeds are here described for the first time. The new information confirms that C. trifoliolata belongs to sect. Hedriocarpae Wight & Arn. subsect. Hedriocarpae. Within that subsection it is similar to a small number of other species of Crotalaria from the Somalia-Masai floristic region (C. leucoclada Baker, C. rhynchocarpa Polhill, C. saltiana Andrews, C. thomasii Harms) in having the inside of the pod densely packed with long, white hairs. C. trifoliolata was observed at the edge of and in glades inside dry Juniperus-Olea forest, in which the canopy is dominated by J. procera Endl. and the undergrowth by Barbeya oleoides Schweinf. and other species characteristic of dry Afromontane forest and bushland. The species is found only in a limited area near the eastern Ethiopian escarpment at Sheik Hussein. It is documented with images and maps, its potential distribution is modelled and a conservation assessment is provided, suggesting that C. trifoliolata is Endangered (E).
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bachman, S., Moat, J., Hill, A. W., de la Torre, J. & Scott, B. (2011). Supporting Red List threat assessments with GeoCAT: geospatial conservation assessment tool. In: V. Smith & L. Penev (eds), e-Infrastructures for data publishing in biodiversity science. ZooKeys 150: 117 – 126. and GeoCAT. Geospatial Conservation Assessment Tool. (Version BETA). http://geocat.kew.org/ (Accessed 17 May 2014).
Baker, E. G. (1896). New African plants. J. Bot. 34: 49 – 57.
____ (1914). The African species of Crotalaria. J. Linn. Soc. Bot. 42: 241 – 425.
CGIAR-CSI (2008). CGIAR-CSI SRTM 90 m DEM Digital Elevation Database. Version 4. CGIAR Consortium for Spatial Information (CGIAR-CSI). http://srtm.csi.cgiar.org/ Index.asp (Accessed 30 April 2014).
Edwards, S. & Zemede Asfaw (1992). The status of some plant resources in parts of Tropical Africa. Botany 2000: East and Central Africa. NAPRECA Monograph Series No. 2.
Friis, I. (1992). Forests and Forest Trees of Northeast Tropical Africa: Their Natural Habitats and Distribution Patterns in Ethiopia, Djibouti and Somalia. Kew Bull. Addit. Ser. 15.
____, Demissew, S. & van Breugel, P. (2010). Atlas of the potential natural vegetation of Ethiopia. Biol. Skr. 58.
Google Earth (2013). Google Earth. Vers. 7.1.2.2041. (Accessed 30 April 2014).
Hedberg, I. (2009). The Ethiopian Flora Project — An Overview. In: I. Hedberg, I. Friis & E. Persson (eds.), Flora of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Vol. 8, pp. 1 – 4. Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa; Uppsala University, Uppsala.
____ & Edwards, S. (1989). Flora of Ethiopia, vol. 3. Addis Ababa and Asmara, Uppsala.
ISRIC (2013). SoilGrids: an automated system for global soil mapping. ISRIC – World Soil Information. http://www.isric.org/content/soilgrids (Accessed 30 April 2014).
IUCN (2012). IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria. Version 3.1. Second edition. Gland & Cambridge.
____ (2013). The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. http://www.iucnredlist.org >. (Accessed 30 April 2014).
Hijmans, R. J., Cameron, S. E., Parra, J. L., Jones, P. G. & Jarvis, A. (2005). Very high resolution interpolated climate surfaces for global land areas. Int. J. Climatol. 25: 1965 – 1978.
Kazmin, V. (1973). Geological Map of Ethiopia. Geological Survey of Ethiopia, Ministry of Mines, Addis Ababa.
Kidane Mengistu (2003). Country paper: Ethiopia. In Anonymous (ed.): Workshop on Tropical Secondary Forest Management in Africa: Reality and Perspectives. Nairobi, Kenya, 09 – 13 Dec. 2002. Proceedings. FAO, Rome. http://www.fao.org/docrep/006/j0628e/J0628E50.htm (Accessed 30 April 2014).
Lovett, J. C. & Friis, I. (1996). Patterns of endemism in the woody flora of north-east and east Africa. In: L. J. G. van der Maesen, X. M. van der Burgt & J. M. van Medenbach de Rooy (eds), The Biodiversity of African Plants, pp. 582–601. Kluwer, Dordrecht.
Meckelburg, A. (2014). Smith, Arthur Donaldson. In: A. Bausi & S. Ulig (eds), Encyclopaedia Aethiopica, vol. 5, pp. 515 – 517. Harassowitz Verlag, Wiesbaden.
Phillips, S. J., Anderson, R. P. & Schapire, R. E. (2006). Maximum entropy modelling of species geographic distributions. Ecological Modelling 190: 231 – 259.
Polhill, R. M. (1982). Crotalaria in Africa and Madagascar. A. A. Balkema, Rotterdam.
Smith, A. D. (1896). Expedition through Somaliland to Lake Rudolf. Geogr. J. (London) 8: 120 – 137, 221 – 239, maps after p. 200. Available at http://www.jstor.org/stable/1773613 (Accessed 30 April 2014).
____ (1897). Through Unknown African Countries. Edward Arnold, London.
Sprague, T. A. (1910 – 1911). Loranthaceae. In: W. T. Thiselton-Dyer (ed.), Flora of Tropical Africa. Vol. 6 (1): 255 – 411. Reeve & Co., Ashford.
Thulin, M. (1983). Leguminosae of Ethiopia. Opera Bot. 68.
____ (1989). Fabaceae (Leguminosae), Subfamily 3: Papilionoideae (Faboideae). In: I. Hedberg & S. Edwards (eds), Flora of Ethiopia. Vol. 3: 97 – 251. Addis Ababa University, Addis Ababa, and Asmara University, Asmara; Uppsala University, Uppsala.
____ (1993). Fabaceae (Leguminosae). In: M. Thulin (ed.), Flora of Somalia, vol. 1: 341 – 465. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
Van Wyk, B. E. (2005). Tribe Crotalarieae. In: G. Lewis, B. Schrire, B. Mackinder & M. Lock (eds), Legumes of the World, pp. 273 – 297. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew.
von Erlanger, C. F. (1904). Bericht über meine Expedition in Nordost-Afrika in den Jahren 1899 – 1901. Z. Ges. Erdk. Berlin 1904: 89 – 117.
Vivero, J. L., Kelbessa, E. & Demissew, S. (2005). The Red List of Endemic Trees and Shrubs of Ethiopia and Eritrea. Fauna & Flora International, Cambridge.
Walter, K. S. & Gillett, H. J. (1998). 1997 IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants. Compiled by the World Conservation Monitoring Centre. IUCN — The World Conservation Union, Gland and Cambridge.
White, F. (1983). Vegetation of Africa: a descriptive memoir to accompany the Unesco/AETFAT/UNSO vegetation map of Africa. Nat. Resources Res. no. 20. Unesco, Paris.
Acknowledgements
We wish to thank the Carlsberg Foundation and the Bentham-Moxon Trust of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, for financial support of our field work in Ethiopia in 2013, our travel companions Wege Abebe, technical assistant at the Ethiopian National Herbarium, Addis Ababa University, Abubaker Atem, guide from Dinshu, and Ermias Getachew, driver at the Faculty of Science, Addis Ababa University, for excellent help and company in the field, the National Herbarium (ETH), Addis Ababa, for logistic support and Paulo van Breugel for sharing his model of Ethiopian environmental parameters with us.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Friis, I., Weber, O. Crotalaria trifoliolata (Leguminosae: Papilionoideae), a previously incompletely known Ethiopian endemic rediscovered after 120 years. Kew Bull 69, 9536 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12225-014-9536-7
Accepted:
Published:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12225-014-9536-7