Polycnemum majus A. Braun ex Bogenh.

Raus, Thomas, 2022, Taxonomic, nomenclatural and floristic review of Amaranthaceae of Greece and neighbouring countries, Willdenowia 52 (3), pp. 335-357 : 349

28. Polycnemum majus A. Braun ex Bogenh. in Flora 24: 151. 1841 ≡ Polycnemum arvense var. maximum Bogenh. in Flora 23: 166. 1840 ≡ Polycnemum arvense var. majus (A. Braun ex Bogenh.) Döll, Rhein. Fl. : 287. 1843, nom. superfl. ≡ Polycnemum arvense subsp. majus (A. Braun ex Bogenh.) Čelak. in Sborn. Věd. Mus. Král. Čes. Odb. PŘÍr. Math. 4: 65. 1870. – Lectotype (designated by Freitag & Iamonico 2015: 236): Europe, Germany, Rheinland-Pfalz, Martinstein an der Nahe, September 1838, Bogenhardt (JE JE-00021893).

= Polycnemum majus var. mediterraneum Beck in Reichenbach, Icon. Fl. Germ. Helv. 24: 93. 1907 ≡ Polycnemum majus subsp. mediterraneum (Beck) Vul’f, Fl. Kryma 2: 87. 1947. – Type: not designated.

Remarks — The species is native to C, S and E Europe and W Asia, occurring in all Balkan countries ( Iamonico 2015a). It is scattered in N mainland Greece ( Strid & Tan (1997: map 204), additionally reported from the N Aegean island of Samothraki ( Biel & Tan 2014). Like Polycnemum arvense , it is easily overlooked and probably more widespread in Greece than the present data indicate.

Polycnemum majus was initially described as a variety of P. arvense by its discoverer Carl Christian Gmelin and his student Karl (Carl) Friedrich Schimper ( Gmelin 1826: 28; Döll 1843: 287), but soon became accepted as a separate species constantly differing from P. arvense by non-modificative, morphological discontinuities ( Koch 1846: 715; Döll 1859: 616; Hallier & Brand 1907: 2202). A hill named Turmberg (Thurmberg) near the town of Durlach (now a suburb of the city of Karlsruhe, SW Germany) represents the locus classicus ( Seybold 1990: 479) where, in 1810, Carl Christian Gmelin, then director of the botanical garden at Karlsruhe and at the same time biology teacher of the young Alexander Braun ( Caspary 1877), first encountered a Polycnemum population with plants markedly deviating from P. arvense in larger leaf, bract and fruit dimensions (“ Polycnemum arvense . var. major pedalis, sesquipedalis, multo-crassior, prostrata et adscendens.”, Gmelin 1826: 28; specimen in KR!). Karl (“Carl”) Friedrich Schimper ( Leutz 1890; Mägdefrau 1968), a close, lifelong academic friend to Alexander Braun, corresponded with the latter on a pending “ P. arvense var. majus ” in a letter of 1826 ( Döll 1843: 287). However, a valid name for the taxon under discussion remained unpublished (sec. W. D. J. Koch in litt., cited in Bogenhard 1841: 151) and was not yet to be found in the basic C European flora of 1838 ( Koch 1838: 602). Only in 1841 was P. majus validly published at specific rank by Alexander Braun, then professor of botany at the Polytechnic School of Karlsruhe and in 1837 appointed director of the “Naturaliencabinett” what is today the Natural History Museum at Karlsruhe ( Wunschmann 1903). Publication of the new species was executed in the context of a floristic paper on noteworthy plants of SW Germany by a young German pharmacist-in-training, Carl Bogenhard ( Bogenhard 1841), who explicitly acknowledged Alexander Braun by ascribing the name to him. The new species was promptly incorporated in the second edition of Wilhelm Daniel Joseph Koch’s basic flora ( Koch 1846: 715, as “ P. majus (Alex. Braun.) ”). A single extant specimen in the herbarium of the Staatliches Museum für Naturkunde Karlsruhe (KR), labelled “ Polycnemum majus A. Br., Durlach, A. Braun ” would have been suitable for lectotypification (A. Kleinsteuber, Karlsruhe, in litt.). This, however, is prevented by Freitag & Ianonico (2015), who chose a specimen named one year earlier as P. arvense var. maximum Bogenh. ( Bogenhard 1840: 164) to serve as the lectotype for P. majus , simultaneously considering the latter to be a replacement name for the former (Freitag & Ianonico 2015: 236). Bogenhard (1841) ascribed the name to Braun, but not the validating diagnosis, which was his own, hence under Shenzhen Code Art. 46.5 the name is to be attributed to “A. Braun ex Bogenh.” or just “Bogenh.” ( Shultz 2003; Masson & Kadereit 2013; POWO 2022). The nomenclatural authorship “A. Braun in Bogenh.” as advocated by influential basic floras and checklists ( Koch 1846; Ball 1993; Hand & al. 2022) is to be corrected accordingly. A published incorrectness is, by the way, the fiction of “A. Brown” as the nomenclatural author of P. majus – just a slip of the pen in Iamonico (2013), nominating an imaginary chimaera among taxonomic authors which superficially associates Addison Brown, the co-editor of An illustrated flora of the northern United States […] (Britton & Brown 1896–1898), whose standardized author abbreviation reads “Britton & A. Br.” (sec. Brummitt & Powell 1992). The author abbreviation “A. Br.” connected to vascular plants of Europe, however, refers invariably to Alexander Braun (see Raus 2007), whose pertinent standard abbreviation reads “A. Braun” (sec. Brummitt & Powell 1992).