Platyzoma

Platyzoma placed in Pteris (Pteridaceae), and correcting erroneous combinations made in Pteris of Gleichenia species.

In the New Combinations section on page 22, we attempted to provide new combinations for the genus Platyzoma R.Br., which is embedded in Pteris L. (Schuettpelz & Pryer 2007, Lehtonen 2011). When doing so, we made the unfortunate choice to follow the treatment of Platyzoma by Desvaux (1827), which included several additional species of Gleichenia, instead of the modern treatment of Platyzoma in which only the species Platyzoma microphyllum Brown (1810: 160) is included. Only that name needed to be transferred. This resulted in the creation of a number of unnecessary new names and combinations of Australasian Gleichenia, for which we apologise. We erroneously provided names in Pteris for Gleichenia dicarpa R.Br., G. alpina R.Br. and G. rupestris R.Br., which are all correctly placed in Gleichenia and not in Pteris. Therefore these new names are to be treated as synonyms. Gleichenia speluncae R.Br. and its combination in Pteris are synonyms of G. rupestris.

To complicate matters, the combination ' Pteris microphylla ' is already published earlier [by Cavanilles (in Swartz 1806: 324, nomen), by Cunningham (1836: 366), and by Colla (1836)] and is therefore not available for this taxon. We chose Platyzoma recurvum Desv. to make the combination for this taxon, an unfortunate choice, because that name is synonymous to Gleichenia microphyllum R.Br., not Platyzoma microphyllum R.Br.

Unfortunately type specimens of Platyzoma ferruginea and P. latum could not be located, but based on their descriptions they appear both to be synonymous to Dicranopteris linearis (Burm.f.) Underwood (1907: 250). Of this species several varieties are known to occur in Australia and it is likely that these two names apply to different varieties, although it may not be certain to which one, due to the absence of original material to verify.

Below we provide an overview of the taxa that we incorrectly applied, and we formally synonymise our superfluous new names in Pteris that are underlined for convenience.

Correct names:

Dicranopteris linearis (Burm.f.) Underw.

Synonyms: Platyzoma ferruginea Desvaux (1827: 199), syn. nov., Pteris platyferra Christenh., syn. nov. Platyzoma latum Desvaux (1827: 199), syn. nov., Pteris platylata Christenh., syn. nov.

Gleichenia alpina R.Br.

Synonyms: Calymella alpina (R.Br.) C.Presl, Gleichenia dicarpa var. alpina (R.Br.) Hook. f., Mertensia alpina (R.Br.) Poir., Platyzoma alpinum (R.Br.) Desv., Pteris platyzoma Christenh., syn. nov.