Lepidagathis diffusa C.B.Clarke

Lepidagathis diffusa C.B.Clarke View in CoL versus Lepidagathis decumbens Dhatchan. & Soosairaj

Lepidagathis diffusa View in CoL was described by Clarke (1885) based on the collections of Robert Wight from the Deccan Peninsula (K [K000950052]) and R.H.Beddome from Bellary in Karnataka (K [K000950051], BM [BM013860273]). It was compared with L. cristata Willd. View in CoL , the type of Lepidagathis View in CoL . The specific epithet diffusa View in CoL was taken from Barleria diffusa Wight View in CoL , which was a name annotated on the Wight specimen at Kew.It is endemic to India, occurring in the states of Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu ( Dhatchanamoorthy et al., 2017; Susmitha et al., 2023) and its geographical distribution is given in Fig. 4 View FiG .

Dhatchanamoorthy et al. (2017) reported that L. diffusa View in CoL was rediscovered after a lapse of 142 years from Palacode in the Dharmapuri district of Tamil Nadu. A thorough consultation of herbarium specimens in various herbaria during the present study shows that the species was collected regularly by many workers in the past after its type collection, although all these specimens were misidentified as either L. cristata View in CoL or L. trinervis Nees. View in CoL

Recently, Dhatchanamoorthy et al. (2022) described a new species, L. decumbens Dhatchan. & Soosairaj , based on specimens collected from a single locality in Dharmapuri district, Tamil Nadu, and distinguished it from L. diffusa . The results of our study suggest that the differentiating diagnostic characters between L. decumbens and L. diffusa listed by the authors either overlap with those of L. diffusa or erroneous observations. Thus, L. decumbens is reduced here to the synonymy of the widespread endemic species, L. diffusa . A comparison of diagnostic characters with critical notes based on our present observations are given in Table 1. In a recently published synopsis of Indian Lepidagathis, Brahmadande and Nandikar (2023) recognised L. decumbens as a distinct species, but we do not follow this conclusion here as outlined above.