Ficus schiedeana ( Miquel [1847: 539] ) Berg & DeWolf (1975: 258)

Mitidieri-Rivera, Nicole & Damián-Parizaca, Alexander, 2025, Ficus sytsmae (Moraceae), a new species from South America and the reinstatement of Ficus schiedeana, Phytotaxa 708 (2), pp. 167-181 : 175-177

Ficus schiedeana ( Miquel [1847: 539]) Berg & DeWolf (1975: 258) ( Fig. 5 )

≡ Urostigma schiedeanum Miquel (1847: 539)

TYPE: — MEXICO. Veracruz: near Papantla, Hda. La Laguna , 1828–1829, C.J.W. Schiede & F. Deppe 1116 (lectotype, designated by Berg & DeWolf [1975: 258]: U0004686 [digital image!]; isolectotypes: K000693798!, B100347087!)

Following Mexico’s independence from the Spanish Crown, Count Albert von Sack, Chamberlain to the King of Prussia, decided to travel to Mexico with the intention of acquiring material from the country to enrich the newly established Berlin University. Ferdinand Deppe, an assistant horticulturist at the royal gardens of Charlottenburg, was chosen as a collector of animals and plants and departed in 1824. After parting ways with the Count in 1825, Deppe requested another travel companion, C.J.W. Schiede from Göttingen, who eventually joined him in 1828. Together, they collected approximately 16,296 plant specimens between 1828 and 1829. The material collected up to May 1829 by Deppe and Schiede was acquired by the museum in Berlin ( Stresemann 1954; Ricketson & Pipoly 2003). This batch of botanical collections ultimately came under the supervision of Diederich Franz Leonhard von Schlechtendal (elder), who, in collaboration with L.K.A. von Chamisso, published Plantarum Mexicanarum ( Schlechtendal & Chamisso 1831) , a work cataloging newly described and revised taxa based on Schiede and Deppe’s collections from their 1828– 1829 expedition to Mexico. This publication appeared in the botanical journal Linnaea . In this work, Schlechtendal and Chamisso identified specimen no. 1116 as Ficus prinoides Willdenow (1806: 1149) .

In 1847, the Dutch botanist F.A.W. Miquel described Urostigma schiedeanum Miquel (1847: 539) , based on C.J.W. Schiede & F. Deppe 1116. In the protologue for U. schiedeanum, Miquel (1847) explicitly stated that the type material corresponded to that examined by Schlechtendal and Chamisso, referencing it as " Ficus prinoides, Schlechtend. ad pl. Schied. et Deppe in Linnaea VI , p. 357, haud Willd.," with “ haud ” indicating that he was not referring to Ficus prinoides Willd. Many years later, in 1867, Miquel transferred all Urostigma species to Ficus while maintaining U. schiedeanum as a synonym of Ficus ligustrina Kunth & Bouché (1847: 240) , a taxon based on Venezuelan collections by Johann Wilhelm Karl Moritz, alongside Ficus prinoides Cham. & Schltdl. Miquel’s attribution of F. prinoides to Chamisso and Schlechtendal likely contributed to subsequent misattributions by various institutions, such as IPNI (The International Plant Names Index ; http://ipni.org/), Missouri Botanical Garden’s Tropicos database (http://www. tropicos.org/), and World Flora Online (https://www.worldfloraonline.org/), which have treated the name as an illegitimate homonym. However, Schlechtendal and Chamisso (1831) explicitly cited Willdenow as the original author and thus never intended to publish a new taxon under this name ( Heuchert et al. 2017).

Following Miquel’s synonymization of U. schiedeanum with F. ligustrina , subsequent taxonomic treatments have not recognized the former as a distinct species. Standley (1917) was the first to include U. schiedeanum as a synonym of Ficus padifolia Kunth (1817: 47) . Later, Berg & DeWolf (1975) listed U. schiedeanum Miq. and F. schiediana (Miq.) Miq. as synonyms of F. pertusa . Notably, Miquel (1867) never formally established the combination Ficus schiedeana (see p. 307 under Index generum , specierum et synonymorum). However, according to Articles 41.5 and 41.8 of the International Code of Nomenclature for Algae, Fungi, and Plants (ICN; Turland et al. 2018), Berg & DeWolf (1975) inadvertently made the valid combination Ficus schiedeana (in their work as “schiediana ”) by explicitly indicating its basionym and providing a complete and direct reference to its author, place of valid publication, page number, and date.

Despite this valid publication, F. schiedeana has not been subsequently adopted in the literature. Instead, U. schiedeanum has continued to be treated as a synonym of F. pertusa in Berg & Simonis (2000), Berg & Villavicencio (2003, 2004), and Berg (2012). However, a morphological discrepancy exists between the ostiole descriptions in the protologues of these taxa. Linnaeus filius (1782) described the ostiole of F. pertusa as “umbilicatis,” whereas Miquel (1847) characterized the receptacle of U. schiedeanum as “ore contracto prominulo hiante,” which translates as “narrow and prominent ostiole.” Upon reviewing herbarium specimens and photographic records from iNaturalist, we observed a continuous morphological gradient among certain individuals identified as F. pertusa , some of which exhibit ostiole characteristics aligning with those of F. schiedeana . Thus, we here propose the reinstatement of F. schiedeana (Miq.) Berg & DeWolf as a distinct biological entity. This species is currently known only from Mexico, but its geographic range could extend to Central and South America.

Specimens of F. schiedeana examined:— MEXICO. Tenejapa, 1000 m, 1 November 1972, D.E. Breedlove 29314 (CAS504903 [digital image!]; Chiapas: San Juan de Cancuc, 08 January 1991, E. Santiz Cruz 256 (CAS504934 [digital image!]; Veracruz: Ignacio de la Llave , 24 December 1966, G. Martinez Calderon 1239 (U0130164 [digital image!]; Veracruz: Coetzala , 18 47’N 96 54’W, 550–700 m, 3 July 1982, G. Diggs, M. Nee & G. Schatz 2733 (USF173955 [digital image!]; Chiapas: Palenque, 300 m, 29 July 1989, L.R. Landrum & S.S. Landrum 6354 (CAS504928 [digital image!]; Chiapas: San Fernando, 707 m, 471230.1 1879783.5, 22 May 2009, N. Martinez 2642 (CAS0018621 [digital image!]); Veracruz: Orizaba, 1000–1100 m, 18 51’N 97 03’W, 7 December 1981, M. Nee 23840 (U0039645 [digital image!]); Chiapas: San Juan de Cancuc , 4700 pies, 9 March 1988, E. Sántiz Cruz 499 (CAS504932 [digital image!]; San Luis Potosi: Tamazunchale, 900 m, 13 February 1982, P. Tenorio & R. Hernández 046 (USCG20097 [digital image!]; Chiapas: Yajalón, Chulja, 1000 m, 29 September 1982, A. Méndez 4650 (CAS504927 [digital image!]).

Figures

FIGURE 5. Plate showing the narrow and prominent ostiole and color gradient in the fig of Ficus schiedeana based on records from iNaturalist. Images reproduced under Creative Commons licenses from (A, C, D) Manuel Hernández Ancheita (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0), (B) Styv De Jesús Calva (CC BY-NC 4.0), (E) P. Acevedo (CC0 1.0 Universal; US National Herbarium, Department of Botany, NMNH, Smithsonian Institution), (F) Rossy Vivanco (CC BY-NC 4.0), (G) Saul Miguel Z (CC BY-NC 4.0), (H, I) Sandra Palomino (CC BY-NC 4.0).