Drosera

Robbrecht, E., Smedt, S. De, Goetghebeur, P., Stoffelen, P. & Verloove, F., 2021, Four flowering plant species described from Katanga (Democratic Republic of the Congo) are based on specimens collected in Guangxi, China, Blumea 66 (1), pp. 82-92 : 89-90

Drosera

When Taton (1945) described Drosera insolita Taton , he stressed that the species was the first African representative of subgenus Ergaleium , a mainly Asian-Australian alliance. He believed the widespread D. peltata Sm. ex Willd. to be the clos- est relative. In 1978, Taton, now aware of the Chinese origin, reidentified the specimen as Drosera peltata Thunb. var. lunata (Buch.-Ham. ex DC.) C.B.Clarke , but he never published the correction. Drosera peltata is widespread in China and recorded from Guangxi ( Lianli & Kondo 2001). The latter authors did not recognize var. lunata .

Taton’s species caused erroneous assumptions in the literature on carnivorous plants. Degreef (1989) considered it as a “very slightly mutated form” of a species complex involving D. peltata and D. auriculata Backh. ex Planch. and stated that the range expansion into Africa was important when considering glaciation and dispersion events in Drosera . Schlauer (1996), in a synoptic overview of Drosera , explained the aberrant occurrence in east (sic) Africa as resulting from an ‘almost certainly recent – synanthropous? – range extension’.

Gibson et al. (2012) made a morphological evaluation of the D. peltata complex in Australia. This study recognized six species in the complex, including D. lunata Buch.-Ham. ex DC. , widespread from India to eastern Australia. The authors accessed the virtual herbarium of BR on 5 April 2011 and were hence aware of the Chinese origin of Homblé 169. They reduced D. insolita to a synonym of D. lunata ( Gibson et al. 2012: 75) , that way corroborating Taton’s above mentioned reidentification.