(2974) Proposal to conserve the name <i>Frankenia ericifolia</i> C. Sm. ex <scp>DC</scp>. against <i>F. ericifolia</i> Salisb. (<i>Frankeniaceae</i>)

(2974) Frankenia ericifolia C. Sm. ex DC., Prodr. 1: 350. Jan (med.) 1824 [Angiosp.: Franken.], nom. cons. prop. Lectotypus (hic designatus): [Spain. Canary Islands], “Frankenia vulg. in Teneriffa et aliis ins. – in rupibus maritimis, 1816, Smith” (G-DC barcode G00211215 [fragm. on lower part of sheet]). (H) Frankenia ericifolia Salisb., Prodr. Stirp. Chap. Allerton: 214. Nov–Dec 1796, nom. illeg. (F. laevis L.), nom. rej. prop. Lectotypus (vide Whalen in Regnum Veg. 127: 47. 1993): Löfling, Herb. Linnaeus No. 457.1 (LINN). The name Frankenia ericifolia C. Sm. ex DC. is currently applied to cespitose perennial plants, with leaves revolute to subflattened, minutely whitish-papillate beneath and pilose to glabrescent above, long petiolate; flowers often 1–3, in terminal groups, with calyx 3–4 mm long, strongly twisted after anthesis, papillate on grooves, and petals 4–5 mm long, whitish to pinkish. In the protologue, Candolle (Prodr. 1: 350. 1824) ascribed the name to the Norwegian collector Christen [or Christian] Smith [or Smidt] (1785–1816); the species was said to occur “in maritimis insularum Canariensium”, and brief comments on its affinities to other congeners, such as F. corymbosa Desf. and F. intermedia DC., were also included. No specimen was cited in the protologue, and a later lectotypification is not known to the present authors. Among the material identified as F. ericifolia in Candolle's herbarium, four specimens (i.e., G00211196, G00211197, G00211215, G00211216) mounted on two sheets are found that were collected in the Canary Islands prior to 1824 by different collectors at different times. They all can therefore be considered as original material of the name and hence eligible as type. In particular, the specimen G00211215 (see https://www.ville-ge.ch/musinfo/bd/cjb/chg/adetail.php?id=198967; all online resources accessed 9 May 2023) bears two labels: (i) “Frankenia | vulg. in Teneriffa | et aliis ins. – in rupibus maritimis”, probably handwritten by Smith, and (ii) “Canaries | M. Chr. Smith | 1816”, in Candolle's handwriting. Since the fragment in that specimen matches the description in the protologue and was collected by Ch. Smith in sea-cliffs of Tenerife, it is designated here as lectotype of F. ericifolia C. Sm. ex DC. Some morphological variation exists in Frankenia ericifolia that was analysed by Webb & Berthelot (Hist. Nat. Iles Canaries 3(2,1): 132. 1837), who described two varieties based on habit, leaf morphology and indumentum distribution: (i) var. microphylla widespread in the whole Canary archipelago, and (ii) var. latifolia occurring in Tenerife and La Palma (both varieties in Webb & Berthelot, l.c.: 132, t. 17 & 15. 1837). These names are sometimes regarded as applying to distinct subspecies (see Brochmann & al. in Nordic J. Bot. 15: 603–623. 1995; Beierkuhnlein & al. in Diversity 13: e480. 2021). Treated in a broad sense, Candolle's Frankenia ericifolia is said to be widespread in the Canary Islands (Hansen & Sunding in Sommerfeltia 17: 130–131. 1993; Beierkuhnlein & al., l.c.) and also in the Cape Verde archipelago (Brochmann & al., l.c. 1995). It is found on maritime cliffs and rocky habitats close to the sea shore, where it is part of halophytic vegetation included in some European conservation laws (see below). However, recent taxonomic work on the Cape Verdean flora by Rivas-Martínez & al. (in Int. J. Geobot. Res. 7: 1–103. 2017) suggests that the name F. ericifolia should be narrowed and applied exclusively to the Canarian populations, whereas the Cape Verdean plants would belong to a distinct vicarious species to which the name F. pseudoericifolia Rivas Mart. & al. should be applied. References to the presence of F. ericifolia s.l. in northwestern Africa (Sidi Ifni and Morocco) are doubtful, and in fact the species is not listed in recent Moroccan floras (Ouyahya in Fennane & al., Fl. Prat. Maroc 1: 331–334. 1999). This restrictive treatment of both names is admitted in POWO (https://powo.science.kew.org/results?q=Frankenia) and is accepted here. In any case, Frankenia ericifolia C. Sm. ex DC. as currently applied is illegitimate and should not be used following the ICN (Turland & al. in Regnum Veg. 159. 2018). This is because the compound name “F. Ericaefolia”, which is to be corrected to F. ericifolia according to Art. 60.10(b) Ex. 36–37, had first been coined by Salisbury (Prodr. Stirp. Chap. Allerton: 214. 1796) for a different plant. This latter name, however, was nomenclaturally superfluous when published since it was solely validated by including F. laevis L. (Sp. Pl.: 331. 1753) in its synonymy (Art. 6.12(a)), which makes it a superfluous replacement name and therefore illegitimate (Art. 52.1 & 52.2(e)). A lectotype (LINN No. 457.1) was designated by Whalen (in Regnum Veg. 127: 47. 1993) for F. laevis L., which is automatically the type of Salisbury's species name (Art. 7.5). In consequence, the name in use F. ericifolia C. Sm. ex DC. is a later homonym of F. ericifolia Salisb., and hence also illegitimate and unavailable for use even although the latter (the earlier homonym) is illegitimate itself (Art. 53.1 Note 2). In this scenario, unless the rules are suspended in favour of the proposed conserved name, a new replacement name (Art. 6.11) should be proposed for the well-established Canarian endemic, F. ericifolia C. Sm. ex DC., due to the existence of an almost forgotten earlier homonym, which has never been used in the last two centuries. The name Frankenia ericifolia C. Sm. ex DC. is currently in use and accepted in Macaronesian floras and checklists (e.g., Hansen & Sunding, l.c.; Brochmann & al., l.c. 1995; Brochmann & al. in Sommerfeltia 24: 228–237. 1997; Bramwell & Bramwell, Fl. Silvest. Islas Canarias, ed. 4. 2001; Acebes Ginovés & al. in Izquierdo & al., Lista Espec. Silv. Canarias: 96–143. 2004; Beierkuhnlein & al., l.c.), and it is also broadly accepted on influential websites, such as the African Plant Database (https://africanplantdatabase.ch/en/nomen/143392), Euro+Med PlantBase (http://ww2.bgbm.org/EuroPlusMed/PTaxonDetail.asp?NameCache=Frankenia%20ericifolia&PTRefFk=7500000), Global Biodiversity Information Facility-GBIF (https://www.gbif.org/es/species/8596463), Plants of the World Online-POWO (https://powo.science.kew.org/results?q=Frankenia), Tela Botanica-France (https://www.tela-botanica.org/bdtfx-nn-85170-synthese), TROPICOS (https://tropicos.org/name/100339488), or World Flora Online-WFO (https://wfoplantlist.org/plant-list/taxon/wfo-0000692006-2022-12?page=1). In parallel, in most of those same websites, the name F. ericifolia Salisb. is included as a “nomen illegitimum” in the synonymy of F. laevis L. A Google Scholar string search (10 May 2023) for “Frankenia ericifolia Salisb.” returned only 10 results, most of them pointing out to the illegitimacy of the name as a synonym of Frankenia laevis L. Far more numerous results (over 1300) were obtained from a parallel search for the strings “Frankenia ericifolia C.Sm. ex DC.” or “Frankenia ericifolia Ch.Sm. ex DC.”. A high percentage of those latter entries correspond to sites with general information on the Canarian flora, which testifies to the widespread usage of this name also among amateur botanists and conservationists. Furthermore, Frankenia ericifolia C. Sm. ex DC. is one of the key species of the natural habitat type “1250 Vegetated sea cliffs with endemic flora of the Macaronesian coasts”, which is included in the Interpretation Manual of the European Union Habitats: EUR 25 (2003) and is the basis for conservation of plant communities and species occurring in such fragile coastal ecosystems, in the framework of the “Habitats Directive” (Council Directive 92/43/EEC of 21 May 1992 on the conservation of natural habitats and of wild fauna and flora; https://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/?uri=celex%3A31992L0043). In particular, that species characterises locally the so-called “Aerohaline communities of the sea-cliffs of the Canaries and Madeira (Frankenio-Astydamietalia latifoliae)”, and its name forms part of the formal names of several syntaxa in the widely used phytosociological classification of the Macaronesian vegetation by Rivas-Martínez & al. (in Itin. Geobot. 14: 1–341. 2001). This includes the alliance Frankenio (ericifoliae)-Astydamion latifoliae Santos 1976 and the association Frankenio ericifoliae-Astydamietum latifoliae Lohmeyer & Trautmann ex Santos 1976. All these vegetation-type names are currently broadly used in phytosociological, ecological and conservation studies in many biological groups, and if the name F. ericifolia were to be replaced due to illegitimacy they all would need to be changed, according to Art. 44 of the “International Code of Phytosociological Nomenclature” (cf. Theurillat & al. in Appl. Veg. Sci. 24: e12491. 2021). Therefore, for these reasons, we formally propose to conserve Frankenia ericifolia C. Sm. ex DC. under Art. 14 of the ICN against the earlier illegitimate and almost forgotten F. ericifolia Salisb. to avoid disadvantageous nomenclatural changes and best serve stability of nomenclature. Acceptance of the present proposal would preserve the use of the well-established F. ericifolia C. Sm. ex DC. in its traditional concept and would eliminate the need for a new name for the Canarian plant. On the contrary, failure to accept this proposal would create undesirable nomenclatural instability and also would add unnecessary confusion to plant taxonomists, phytosociologists and plant conservationists, some even affecting some current Spanish and European laws on natural and seminatural habitat conservation. MBC, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3294-5637 MÁA, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3768-9203 MMA, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2605-9575 The curators of the herbaria cited in the text are kindly thanked. We are also very grateful, as usual, to John McNeill (Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K. & Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) and John Wiersema (Department of Botany, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.) for their editorial comments and wise suggestions. This work was partly supported by the grants UAUSTI21-04, UAUSTI22-05, ACIE20-01, ACIE21-01 ACIE22-01, and VIGROB2022-166, from diverse programmes of Universidad de Alicante, Spain.

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