Lepidagathis fasciculata (Retz.) Nees

Lepidagathis fasciculata (Retz.) Nees View in CoL versus Lepidagathis rajasekharae K.Prasad & A.M.Reddy

Lepidagathis fasciculata (Retz.) Nees View in CoL was originally described as Ruellia fasciculata View in CoL by Retzius (1786) based on the collection of König (LD [LD1801295]) from “ Habitat in nemorolis prope Thermas Trinquemallënses Zeylonäe ” (Trincomalee), Sri Lanka. Nees von Esenbeck (1832) divided the species into two unnamed varieties α ( foliis grosse dentatis) and β ( foliorum dentibus minoribus). The α (alpha) variety represents the typical plant based on multiple citations of earlier literature with two collections, Wall. Numer. List: n. 2394a and 2406. The β (beta) variety was based on a nomen nudum, Ruellia viscosula Wall. View in CoL (Numer. List: n. 2394c). Subsequently, Nees von Esenbeck (1847) proposed another variety α* ( minor et laxior) based on his species, Lepidagathis hirta Nees (1841) View in CoL , described on the basis of Walkers collections from Sri Lanka.

Lepidagathis goensis Dalzell View in CoL was described by Dalzell (1850) based on the collections of Stocks and Dalzell (K [K001392436, K001392438, K001392442]) from the foothills of Syhadree (Sahyadri) mountains and differentiated it from L. ceylanica Nees View in CoL in its small hairy leaves. Later it was reduced to the synonymy of L. fasciculata View in CoL by Anderson (1867). This treatment was followed by Clarke (1885), Cooke (1905), Almeida (2003), Karthikeyan et al. (2009) and POWO (2023). However, Brahmadande and Nandikar (2023) did not notice these earlier treatments reporting that they had reduced it to the synonymy for the first time. In most of the published state ( Rao, 1986; Moorthy, 2001), regional ( Nayar et al., 2014) and national ( Arisdason et al., 2020) checklists and floras, L. goensis View in CoL has neither been cited as a synonym nor as an accepted taxon.

Prasad and Reddy (2020) described Lepidagathis rajasekharae View in CoL , based on specimens collected from Talakona in the Sesachalam hills of Kadapa district, Andhra Pradesh. They compared it with L. fasciculata View in CoL , a widely distributed species on the Indian subcontinent and in Southeast Asia. Our studies suggest that all diagnostic characters used to differentiate the new species from L. fasciculata View in CoL are either clinal, variable, or erroneous observations. Therefore, L. rajasekharae View in CoL is treated here as conspecific to L. fasciculata View in CoL . A comparison of diagnostic characters with critical notes based on our present observations are presented in Table 2.