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Tropical Asian spiny Solanum

Specimen data used for the publication:
Aubriot X, Knapp S (2022) A revision of the “spiny solanums” of Tropical Asia (Solanum Leptostemonum Clade: Solanaceae).PhytoKeys 198: 1-270.

The Leptostemonum Clade, or the “spiny solanums”, is the most species-rich monophyletic clade of large cosmopolitan genus Solanum (Solanaceae) and represents almost half the species diversity of the genus. Species diversity in the clade is highest in the Americas, but significant clusters of endemic taxa occur in the Eastern Hemisphere. We present here a taxonomic revision of the 51 species of spiny solanums occurring in tropical Asia (excluding the island of New Guinea and the lowlands of Nepal and Bhutan). Three species are described as new: Solanum kachinense X.Aubriot & S. Knapp sp. nov. from northern Myanmar, S. peikuoense SS.Ying ex X.Aubriot & S.Knapp, sp. nov. from Taiwan, and S. sulawesi X.Aubriot & S. Knapp sp. nov. from northern Sulawesi, Indonesia. Of the spiny solanums occurring in the region, 38 are native and 13 are introduced from the Americas or Africa, either as adventive weeds or as cultivated plants. Phylogenetic resolution amongst these taxa is still a work in progress, so we have chosen to treat these taxa in a geographical context to aid with identification and further taxon discovery. For the native species we provide complete nomenclatural details for all recognised species and their synonyms, complete descriptions, distributions including maps, common names and uses, and preliminary conservation assessments. For the introduced taxa that have been treated in detail elsewhere we provide details of types, synonyms based on tropical Asian material, general distributions, and common names for the region. We provide lecto- or neotypifications for 67 names; 63 for native and 4 for introduced taxa. All taxa are discussed and compared to similar species; keys are provided for all taxa. We illustrate all native species with herbarium and field photographs and introduced species with field photographs only. All specimens examined for this treatment are included in Supplementary material as searchable files.

Data and Resources

Cite this as

Sandra Knapp; Xavier Aubriot (2022). Tropical Asian spiny Solanum [Data set]. Natural History Museum. https://doi.org/10.5519/0rqfzvgd
Retrieved: 12:42 16 May 2024 (UTC) BibTeX

Additional Info

Field Value
Primary contributors
Knapp, Sandra ( 0000-0001-7698-3945);
Aubriot, Xavier ( 0000-0002-8112-0754)
Other contributors
Last updated March 25, 2022
Last resource update March 25, 2022 (SM2 Tropical Asian specimens)
Created March 25, 2022
License Open Data Commons Attribution License