Stipa fontanesii Parlatore (1850: 167)

Vázquez, Francisco Maria, Márquez, Francisco, García, David & Oualidi, Jalal El, 2025, A taxonomic revision of Stipeae s. l. tribe (Poaceae) in N Africa, Phytotaxa 699 (1), pp. 1-174 : 72-74

Stipa fontanesii Parlatore (1850: 167) .

≡ Stipa holosericea subsp. fontanesii (Parl.) Tzvelev (1974: 15) .

Observations: Parlatore (1848: 167); described a new species of Stipa from Atlantic and Greece areas, based on the descriptions of Desfontaines (1798: 98) and Sibthorp & Smith (1806: 67, t. 85). The materials identified as S. juncea by Desfontaines (l.c.) and Sibthorp & Smith (l.c.), was clearly different from the S. juncea from Sardinia ( Italy), promoting a new species that was named Stipa fontanesii Parl. ( Parlatore, 1850: 167) . The material identified by Desfontaines as Stipa juncea L. from North Africa, were preserved in Paris in his personal herbarium (P-DESF!). This material corresponds to Stipa offneri Breistr. , a taxon traditionally confused as S. juncea L., by numerous European authors ( Gouan, 1765; Gaudin, 1828; Loiseleur, 1828) until in the middle of the last century, when Breistroffer (1950) solved the problem by describing a new taxon named S. offneri Breitr. (sub nom. nov.), based on material identified as S. juncea L., by European authors such as Gaudin, 1828 or Parlatore, 1850.

These data show that the S. juncea of Parlatore is different from Stipa juncea L., and was also the same Stipa species found by Desfontaines in the North Africa. However, Parlatore also included S. juncea by Sibthorp & Smithp, from Greece, which corresponds to Stipa holosericea Trin. (Lectotype: LE n.v. ( Freitag, 1985)) ( Strid & Strid, 2009). Traditionally, later authors have tended to synonymise S. fontanesii Parl. with S. holosericea Trin. ( Freitag, 1985; Scholz, 1985; 1996; Danin, 2004; Strid & Strid, 2009). However, Parlatore (1850), included two different species within the description of S. fontanesii Parl. , based exclusively on the illustrations accompanying the works of Desfontaines (1798: t. 28, N Africa) and Sibthorp & Smith (1806: t. 85, Greece), which were identified as S. juncea or S. fontanesii Parl. , since no material of either origin was avalaible in the FI herbarium before 1850. There is a certain similarity between the two illustrations, which may have contributed to the confusion in Parlatore (1850: 167). Given with this situation and benefiting from the nomenclatural stability and habitual use (Art. 9; Recommendation 9A.4 of the Code (Turland et al., 2018)) of the name S. fontanesii Parl. , the illustration in the Flora Graecca by Sibthorp & Smith (1806: t. 85) is selected as the lectotype, assigning S. fontanesii Parl. as a synonym of S. holosericea Trin. ,and the type of Stipa fontanesii Parlatore (1850: 167) (lectotype: Tabula 85! ( Sibthorp & Smith, 1806: tab. 85), designated here). The name S. fontanesii Parl. , (= Stipa holosericea Trinius (1830: 81) [lectotype LE n.v. ( Freitag (1985: 476)] = S. kotschyana Hochst. ex Griseb in Ledebour. (1852: 448) pro. syn.) will be excluded from the flora of North Africa.

The traditional treatment has been to treat S. fontanesii to S. holosericea as independent taxa. However, several authors such as Davis (1985), Danin (2004), and Takhtajan (2006) have proposed that S. fontanesii is synonymous with S. holosericea .