Lomandra banksii (R.Br.) Lauterb.

1. Lomandra banksii (R.Br.) Lauterb. View in CoL — Fig. 1 View Fig

Lomandra banksii ( R.Br.) Lauterb. (1913) View in CoL 294. — Xerotes banksii R.Br. (1810) View in CoL 263. — Lectotype (first step designated by Lee & Macfarlane 1986: 120, second step designated here): J. Banks & D. Solander s.n. (lecto BM [ BM00939351 ]*; isolecto BM [ BM000990569 , BM000990570 ]*, BRI [ AQ424979 ], MEL [ MEL2297611 View Materials ]*, NSW [ NSW133221 About NSW , NSW171097 About NSW ]*, P [ P00781047 ]*), Australia, Queensland, Cook District, Endeavour River , 1770 (see discussion below).

Unbranched shrubs, 1–2 m tall. Leaves rather scattered, 25– 40 cm long, 3.5–4.7 mm wide; lamina dehiscing readily at c. 0.5 cm from base, remainder recurving strongly; apex with 1–3 obscure teeth. Inflorescences terminal, exceeding leaves, branched once or twice, lowest whorl of branches borne 5–15 cm above the base, usually at least 2 cm between whorls, branches to 12 cm long, perhaps shorter in pistillate than in staminate plants. Staminate flowers sessile, each ensheathed by two bracts of c. 1 mm long; the outer 3 tepals (sepals) 2.2–2.5 by c. 1.5 mm; the inner 3 tepals (petals) c. 3 by 1 mm; stamens 6, filaments opposite sepals c. 1.7 mm long, filaments opposite petals c. 2.1 mm long, the anthers c. 0.5 mm long; pistillode prominent, c. 1.5 mm long, stigma not developed. Pistillate flowers sessile, usually with a single additional ensheathing bract; outer 3 tepals (sepals) 4.3–5.3 by c. 3.2 mm, inner 3 tepals (petals) 4.6–4.8 by c. 2.8 mm; stamens very much as in staminate flowers, but anthers rudimentary; ovary ovoid, 3-angled, c. 2.7 by 1.9 mm across; style c. 1.3 mm long; stigma papillate, with 3 short, retrorse arms. Fruits symmetrical, surrounded by persistent tepals at the base, ovoid, 8–9 by 5–7 mm across, usually 3-seeded, strongly pointed at the apex, the valves with 4 or 5 fine transverse wrinkles per mm. Seeds ellipsoid, slightly curved or not, c. 5 by 3–3.5 mm across, orange or reddish when dry, the testa coarsely and irregularly reticulate.

Distribution — Malesia: Papua New Guinea ( Western Province); Australia (NE Queensland), New Caledonia (partly after Plants Of the World Online (POWO) continuously updated).

Habitat & Ecology — Lomandra banksii is an occasional plant in dense savannah forests at low altitude. Flowering and fruiting: January.

Specimens examined. AUSTRALIA, N. Byrnes 3126a (staminate: BRI), [Australia, Queensland] Lizard Island; S.L. Thompson SLT14293 (staminate, pistillate and carpellate: BRI), [Australia, Queensland] 25 km Southeast of Lakefield Range base; K.A.W. Williams 85153 (pistillate and carpellate:BRI), [Australia, Queensland] Dulhunty River,south bank.– NEW GUINEA, L.J. Brass 8700 (staminate, pistillate and carpellate:A*; pistillate and carpellate: BRI), [Papua New Guinea, Western Division] Tarara, Wassi Kussa River.

Notes — There has been some confusion surrounding the authorship of the combination Lomandra banksii . Currently two versions are in use: Lomandra banksii (R.Br.) Engl. ex Lauterb. , as listed by both the IPNI (continuously updated) and POWO (continuously updated); and Lomandra banksii (R.Br.) Lauterb. , as used in Australian sources including the Flora of Australia ( Lee & Macfarlane 1986) and the Australian Plant Name Index (APNI, continuously updated). Ewart (1916) listed 26 combina- tions in Lomandra for the Xerotes species of Brown and others included in the ‘Second Systematic Census’ of Mueller (1889), among them X. banksii . However, Stevens (1978) was the first modern author to recognise that it was Lauterbach (1913) who first transferred X. banksii to Lomandra . Stevens thus applied the name L. banksii (R.Br.) Lauterb. when describing the species from New Guinea in detail.

It is noteworthy that Lauterbach (1913: 294) credited the combination L. banksii to Engler (1888) by giving the authority as ‘(R. Br.) Engl.’. Despite his presentation of the genus as ‘ Lomandra Labill. ( Xerotes R. Br. )’, and thus being the first author to reinstate Lomandra as the correct earliest name over Xerotes, Engler (1888) did not mention L. banksii or indeed any other Lomandra species in his monograph. By citing Engler as the author of the species name, Lauterbach was appar- ently asserting that Engler (1888) had, without explicitly listing them, transferred all Xerotes species names to Lomandra . Since Engler did not associate any species epithets with the name of the genus Lomandra (see the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (ICN) Article 35.2; Turland et al. 2018), Lauterbach is taken to have made an er- ror in author citation and the correct authorship for Lomandra banksii is (R.Br.) Lauterb. The usage by Ewart (1916) is a later isonym and has no nomenclatural standing.

Lectotypification — When Brown (1810) described Xerotes banksii R.Br. his citation ‘(T.) B v. s.’ referred to material collected by J. Banks & D. Solander in 1770 from Endeavour River, northeast Queensland. Subsequently, Lee & Macfarlane (1986) gave the type citation ‘T: Endeavour River, [Qld], 1770, J.Banks & D.Solander; holo: BM, photo seen ( ♀); iso: P’. Given that the concept of type specimens did not exist at the time that the name was published by Brown, and that Brown evidently had more than one specimen available to him, this indication of a holotype was incorrect and should instead be taken as a lectotype designation, as indicated by Mabberley & Moore (2022) for several other Lee & Macfarlane ‘holotype’ designations. However, JSTOR Global Plants shows that there are three specimen sheets of X. banksii R.Br. collected by Banks and Solander present at BM so the Lee & Macfarlane lectotypification should be considered a first step lectotypification.Although only one of the three BM specimens is pistillate as cited by Lee & Macfarlane and it could be argued that this was sufficient to identify the specimen they were citing, it seems preferable to explicitly indicate a specimen using the more recently furnished BM barcode number as a second step lectotypification. Therefore, the lectotype for the name Xerotes banksii R.Br. according to the ICN rules ( Turland et al. 2018) is chosen here as BM00939351, the only sheet of pistillate plants (having mature fruits); it bears an original label by Banks & Solander and is annotated with the epithet banksii (as the unpublished field name ‘ Chondrospermum Banksii ’, possibly by Solander) ( Fig. 1 View Fig ). This sheet was also indicated as a ‘Good Candidate for Lectotype’ by Mabberley & Moore (2022: 186). The other sheets listed, staminate, with flowers shed, are presumed to be duplicates, part of the original gathering, and we regard them as isolectotypes. Note that some of the other isolectotypes cited above were distributed from BM subsequent to Brown’s death, so they may have been available to Brown when X. banksii was published.