Summary
A new rank and combination, Berberis setifolia (Ahrendt) Bharali, B.Hajong & Harber is proposed for B. macrosepala var. setifolia Ahrendt, based on a morphological examination of herbarium specimens from Me La, NE Bhutan and Se La, Arunachal Pradesh, India and living plants from Se La. The treatment of B. macrosepala Hook.f. & Thomson by Ahrendt in his two monographic treatments of Berberis (i.e. Ahrendt 1941, 1961), is shown to not fully reflect the protologue, which describes the taxon as not just one-flowered, but also fascicled. Some specimens that Ahrendt cites, including those of the three varieties of B. macrosepala he proposed, are determined to belong to other species, some of which are unrecognised. Herbarium specimens of Ahrendt’s B. macrosepala var. setifolia from Bhutan are shown to be the same as those of a hitherto unidentified species from Arunachal Pradesh. A detailed taxonomic description, notes on habitat and ecology, and colour photographs are provided for B. setifolia.
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Acknowledgements
We thank the Department of Science and Technology, Government of Arunachal Pradesh and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research for funding the project (GPP0395 and HCP-0035 respectively). We are very grateful to CSIR-NEIST, Jorhat, Assam, for providing facilities to conduct our work. We also thank Magnus Lidén, the joint author with Pankaj Bharali of the Flowers of the Se La: Alpine Plants of NW Arunachal Pradesh (Lidén & Bharali 2020) and Dr G. Narahari Sastry, Director CSIR- NEIST, Jorhat, Assam, for their constant support and guidance. We are grateful to Anand Kumar of CAL, Norbert Holstein of BM and John Parnell of TCD who provided us with images of specimens in their herbaria and to David Boufford of A and Bhaskar Adhikari of E for their comments on earlier drafts of this article.
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Hajong, B., Harber, J. & Bharali, P. Berberis setifolia (Berberidaceae), a new rank for Berberis macrosepala var. setifolia. Kew Bull (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12225-023-10143-7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12225-023-10143-7