Oberonia insectifera Hook.f.

Oberonia insectifera Hook.f. — Fig. 6 View Fig

Oberonia insectifera Hook.f.(1890) pl.21, t. 2004. — Type: King 2793 ((lecto Seidenfaden (1968: 90: inadvertent designation) K 00943005), [ Malaysia, Malaya ], Perak, Larut.

Oberonia basilanensis Ames (1915) 72. — Type: J. Reillo Bur. Sci. 16247 (syn AMES 13339 /barcode 00101939), [ Philippines,] Basilan, 9 Sept. 1912, syn. nov.

Oberonia attenuata Dockrill (1960) 4, text-fig. — Type: A.W. Dockrill s.n. (holo BRI AQ0279632 ; iso NSW 826855), [ Australia,] Queensland, Moss- man River , syn. nov.

Notes — Oberonia basilanensis and O. attenuata are here considered synonyms of O. insectifera . All names share the same overall habit, and several attributes of the flower, including narrow lanceolate petals (arrows in Fig. 6 View Fig ) and the lateral lobes of the lip that are noted to have variable numbers of processes and are frequently inequilateral ( Fig. 6 View Fig ). The names were described from Malaya ( insectifera ), the Philippines ( basilanensis ) and Queensland, Australia ( attenuata ). Specimens are known also from Borneo and Brunei ( Fig. 6e–g View Fig ). Oberonia insectifera has not been reported from New Guinea ( Schlechter 1911 a, Schuiteman & De Vogel 2006, Ormerod 2017), which may be considered an important distributional stepping stone for a species reaching northern Australia. However, the rather large and conspicuous species O. heliophila Rchb.f. (1878) was also never listed for New Guinea but specimens are present in several herbaria (Geiger unpubl. data; A. Schuiteman pers. comm. Jan. 2018). Accordingly, smaller and less obvious species may also not have been documented from New Guinea. The purported Australian endemic O. attenuata shows how important taxonomy can be for conservation assessments.After the description of O. attenuata , the species has not been recollected (B. Lavarack pers. comm. 02/2015), which lead others to call the species ‘extinct’ (Jones 2006). Specimens have recently been re-discovered in Queensland ( Banks 2016, M. Clements pers. comm. Mar. 2017). The difference between local extinction of a wide-spread species ( O. insectifera , including synonym O. attenuata ) at the periphery of the range vs extinction of an entire species ( O. attenuata ) is significant. The lack of floral differences suggests conspecificity even of seemingly disjunct populations as in the case of the Malayan O. insectifera and its synonym O. attenuata from Australia, given the wide dispersal ability indicated by our preliminary molecular phylogeny (Hedderich, Kocyan & Geiger unpubl. data). Oberonia insectifera is distinct from O. rufilabris (see below), which has similarly red flowers with drawn out epichile, and undivided linear lateral lobe on each side of the lip. While O. insectifera flowers may occasionally have only a single lateral lobe on each side ( Fig. 6c View Fig ), it is an uncommon condition of an occasional flower in an inflorescence. In contrast, having examined thousands of O. rufilabris flowers, some with abnormality such as triple gynostemium and ten tepals ( Geiger & Kocyan 2018), not a single flower with two lateral lobes on either side of the lip has been encountered.