(2992) Proposal to conserve the name <i>Rumex tianschanicus</i> with that spelling against <i>R. paulsenianus</i> (<i>Polygonaceae</i>)

(2992) Rumex tianschanicus Losinsk. in Komarov, Fl. URSS 5: 466 (‘tianschanicus’), 716 (‘thjanschanicus’). 22 Jun 1936 [Angiosp.: Polygon.], nom. & orth. cons. prop. Typus: [Kyrgyzstan, Chüy Region, Ala-Archa River valley], “Jugum Alexandrovsky, in valle fl. Alarczi”, 29 Jun 1914, Titov 1506 (LE). (=) Rumex paulsenianus Rech. f. in Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 29: 246. 30 Nov 1931, nom. rej. prop. Lectotypus (vide Rechinger, Fl. Iranica 56: 10. 1968): [Tajikistan, Badakhshan Mountainous Autonomous Region, Ishkoshim District, Kuhilal], “Pamir: Prov. Goran, ad Kuh-i-lal”, 2600 m, 14 Oct 1898, Paulsen 1524 (C barcode C10005261). The name Rumex tianschanicus Losinsk. (with that spelling) was first mentioned by Pavlov (in Trudy Sredne-Aziatsk. Gosud. Univ., Ser. 8b, Bot. 19: 11. 1935) but not validly published there because no Latin description or diagnosis was provided (ICN Art. 39.1; Turland & al. in Regnum Veg. 159. 2018). The name was validly published in the Flora of the USSR (Lozina-Lozinskaya in Komarov, Fl. URSS 5: 466, 716. 1936), where, unfortunately, two different spelling variants appeared. The Latin description validating the name of this new species and the designation of a holotype were published in the Addenda IV (“Diagnoses plantarum novarum in tomo V Florae URSS commemoratum”) on page 716, and the epithet was cited as ‘thjanschanicus’. However, the variant ‘tianschanicus’ was published on page 466, together with the Russian description and other information on the species in the main treatment of the genus. The same spelling ‘tianschanicus’ was consistently used in the key to species of Rumex (page 447) and in the Index of Latin names (page 750). In our opinion, it is quite evident that Lozina-Lozinskaya [Losina-Losinskaja] intended (or at least preferred) the spelling ‘tianschanicus’ for the epithet of her new species of Rumex, while the alternative spelling ‘thjanschanicus’ in the Addenda was introduced (or “corrected”?) by the editor (Komarov?) or some other person (technical editor?). After the validation of the species name, both these spelling variants were used in taxonomic literature. Authors from the former USSR and ex-USSR countries consistently used the spelling ‘tianschanicus’ (e.g., Popova in Vvedensky, Fl. Kirgizsk. SSR 4: 103. 1953; Bajtenov & Pavlov, Fl. Kazakhst. 3: 99. 1960; Paziy [Pazij] in Vvedensky, Opred. Rast. Sredn. Azii [Consp. Fl. Asiae Mediae] 2: 170. 1971; Czerepanov, Sosud. Rast. SSSR [Vasc. Pl. USSR]: 406. 1981, Sosud. Rast. Rossii i Sopred. Gosudarstv [Vasc. Pl. Russia & Adj. States (former U.S.S.R.), Russian edition]: 801. 1995; Bajtenov, Vysokogorn. Fl. Severn. Tyan-Shanya [High-Mountain Fl. N. Tian Shan]: 53. 1985; Lazkov & Sultanova, Kadastr Fl. Kyrgyzst.: 27. 2014). That spelling was also followed in some other publications (Bussmann & al. in Batsatsashvili & al., Ethnobot. Mt. Reg. C. Asia Altai. 2020, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-77087-1_124-1; Grant & al. in PhytoKeys 204: 72. 2022, etc.). However, K.H. Rechinger (in Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 49: 2. 1940) appears to have been the first author to satisfy Art. 61.3 in adopting one of these variants, choosing “thjanschanicus”, a spelling he consistently used (in Ann. Naturhist. Mus. Wien 53(1): 354. 1942; in Candollea 12: 68. 1949; in Oesterr. Bot. Z. 97: 125. 1950; Fl. Iranica 56: 10. 1968, etc.) in all his relevant publications, and that spelling was also accepted in several other publications, mostly those by authors from Iran, Pakistan, and India (e.g., Qaiser in Ali & Qaiser, Fl. Pakistan 205: 147. 2001; Jankju & al. in J. Rangeland Sci. 1: 283. 2011; Srivastava in Indian J. Pl. Sci. 3(2): 149. 2014). The third (“corrected”) spelling variant appeared in the English-language edition of the Flora of China, in which Li & al. (in Wu & al., Fl. China 5: 337. 2003) listed that species as “R. thianschanicus” but also cited its supposedly original spelling as “[thjanschanicus]”. Moreover, while two co-authors (Li Anjen and Sergei Mosyakin) accepted that taxon as a separate species, the second co-author of that treatment (Alisa Grabovskaya-Borodina) commented that “One of us (Grabovskaya-Borodina) treats this as a synonym of Rumex paulsenianus K.H. Rechinger.” Rechinger (in Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 29: 247. 1931) cited in the protologue of Rumex paulsenianus two collections: Paulsen 1524 (barcode C10005261, the image available at https://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.specimen.c10005261; all online resources accessed 4 Jul 2023), containing only fruits collected in mountains of Tajikistan in October 1898, when aboveground plant parts were evidently already dry, and Paulsen 339 (barcode C10005260; https://plants.jstor.org/stable/10.5555/al.ap.specimen.c10005260), collected in Osh, Kyrgyzstan, in June 1898. He also mentioned the living plants cultivated in the Copenhagen Botanical Garden from the seeds of the Paulsen 1524 collection. Later Rechinger (l.c. 1968) explicitly indicated “Pamir: Goran, Kuh-i Lal, 2600 m, Paulsen, C!” (corresponding to Paulsen 1524) as “Typus” (lectotype, Art. 7.11 and 9.3 of the ICN). Indeed, the main morphological differences between these two species, such as the absence of tubercles (in Rumex paulsenianus) or presence of one tubercle (in R. tianschanicus) on inner perianth segments (valves) in fruit, and mostly lax inflorescences in R. tianschanicus and dense inflorescences in R. paulsenianus, are based on quite variable characters that are not always reliably diagnostic in Rumex (see Rechinger & Akeroyd in Tutin & al., Fl. Eur., ed. 2, 1: 99–107. 1993; Mosyakin in FNA Ed. Comm., Fl. N. Amer. 5: 489–533. 2005). In the Plants of the World Online (POWO) database, the variant “Rumex tianschanicus Losinsk. ex Pavlov […] in Trudy Sredne-Aziatsk. Gosud. Univ., Ser. 8b, Bot. 19: 11 (1935), not validly publ.” (https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:697558-1) is cited as a synonym of the accepted name R. thjanschanicus (https://powo.science.kew.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:697559-1). However, in the International Plant Names Index (IPNI), the name “Rumex thjanschanicus” is absent and the only spelling variant recorded is R. tianschanicus (https://ipni.org/n/697559-1). Until recently, these discrepancies in spelling and potential taxonomic problems attracted little attention because this dock species was rather little known, only locally important, and restricted to mountains of Central Asia. However, at present the situation is different because Rumex tianschanicus is a parental species of the increasingly popular hybrid cultivars known as Rumex OK-2, Rumex K-1, Shchavnat [derived from the Ukrainian words shchavel’ (щавель), meaning dock or sorrel, and shpinat (шпінат), meaning spinach], cv. ‘Kyivskyi Ultra’, and cv. ‘Uteush’ or ‘Uteuša’ (after the Ukrainian breeder, Yuriy A. Uteush, 1911–2001). These cultivars originated in the late 1980s–early 1990s from the initial crosses between R. patientia L. and R. tianschanicus at the New Crops Department of the Central Botanical Garden in Kyiv (now the M.M. Gryshko National Botanical Garden, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine). We are preparing a formal botanical description and validation of this hybrid taxon (Rakhmetov & Mosyakin, in progress). These new crop plants are used as spinach greens (young leaves), fodder, and high-yield biomass producers for bioenergy applications, and are cultivated in several European and Asian countries (Ukraine, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Moldova, Germany, Romania, China, Kazakhstan, Norway, etc.). These Rumex cultivars are stress-tolerant robust perennial plants characterized by cold and winter hardiness and tolerance to salt stress and increased humidity (Kosakivska & al. in Gen. Appl. Pl. Physiol. (Spec. Iss.) 34: 405–418. 2008; Rakhmetov, Non-tradit. Pl. Sp. for Bioenerget. 2018, https://doi.org/10.15414/2018.fe-9788055218557). Many agricultural, horticultural, and biotechnological publications on these cultivars are now available (e.g., Kosakivska & al., l.c.; Ślesak & al. in Industr. Crops Prod. 62: 156–165. 2014, in Acta Physiol. Pl. 39: art. 210. 2017, https://doi.org/10.1007/s11738-017-2510-x; Ţîţei & Teleuţă in Lucr. Şti., Ser. Agron. (Chişinău) 58(2): 163–167. 2015; Rakhmetov, l.c.; Rolinec & al. in Acta Fytotechn. Zootechn. (Nitra, Slovakia) 21: 20–23, 129–134, 197–200. 2018; Seitimova & al. in Molecules 28: art. 2347. 2023, https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules28052347; and references therein). In some publications, these hybrid cultivars, when escaped from cultivation, were evaluated as potentially invasive weeds in Central Europe (e.g., Pyšek & al. in Preslia 84: 210. 2012; Hujerová & al. in Grassland Sci. Europe 18: 466–468. 2013, in Weed Res. 53: 378–386. 2013, 57: 81–90. 2017). In all these agricultural, horticultural, ecological, and biotechnological publications, the parent species of the hybrid dock crop was invariably accepted and spelled as Rumex tianschanicus. Moreover, that spelling and that taxonomic concept are already included in some registration documents and national standards for cultivars. Thus, following further research, if R. tianschanicus is treated as a synonym or infraspecific entity of R. paulsenianus (see above the opinion of Grabovskaya-Borodina in Li & al., l.c.), the species name change will cause much inconvenience for agriculturalists, horticulturalists, and plant breeders. A Google search performed on 4 July 2023 for the word combination “Rumex tianschanicus” gave about 23,800 results, while the search for “Rumex thjanschanicus” resulted in just 84 hits, which means that the first spelling variant is much more widely used. The search for the word combination “Rumex paulsenianus” yielded about 680 results, meaning that this species is much less known than R. tianschanicus. Similar searches in Google Scholar yielded 310, 6, and 61 articles respectively. A search in IPNI (see above) for species-rank epithets starting with “tianschan-” produced 156 records, plus 22 records for the spelling variant “tianshan-” and 13 for “thianschan-”, while a search for “thjan-” yielded no results at all. It means that the spelling variant starting with “tianschan-” is most widespread among epithets of vascular plant species referring to the Tian Shan Mountains. The proposed conservation of the name Rumex tianschanicus with that spelling will thus reflect and approve the most widespread and etymologically correct usage. Also, we propose to conserve simultaneously the name R. tianschanicus against the earlier name R. paulsenianus. If these taxa are accepted as two different species, no nomenclatural and taxonomic changes will be needed. However, if these names are considered as referring to one species, the better-known name R. tianschanicus will be used, which will better serve the standardization and taxonomic stability for the increasingly popular and important hybrid dock cultivars. SLM, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3570-3190 DBR, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7260-3263 We are grateful to John H. Wiersema (Smithsonian Institution, Washington, D.C., U.S.A.) for his useful comments and editing and to John McNeill (Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh, Scotland, U.K. & Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto, Ontario, Canada) for his additional editorial comments. The kind help of Linda L. Oestry and her colleagues at the Peter H. Raven Library (Missouri Botanical Garden, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.A.) in obtaining copies of some publications is greatly appreciated.

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