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(2770) Proposal to conserve the name Asparagus draco ( Dracaena draco ) with that spelling ( Asparagaceae: Nolinoidae )

2020; Wiley; Volume: 69; Issue: 5 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/tax.12335

1996-8175

P. Pablo Ferrer‐Gallego, Juan Manuel Martínez Labarga,

Phytochemical Studies and Bioactivities

(2770) Asparagus draco L. in Loefling, Iter Hispan.: 303. Dec 1758 (‘draconis’) [Angiosp.: Lil. / Asparag.], orth. cons. prop. Typus: [icon] “Draco” in Clusius, Rar. Pl. Hist.: 1. 1601. The Canary Islands dragon tree or drago, currently named Dracaena draco (L.) L. (Syst. Nat., ed. 12, 2: 246. 1767) (Asparagaceae), is an iconic and emblematic plant native to the Canary Islands (Gran Canaria, Tenerife), Cape Verde (Santo Antão, Sao Nicolãu, Fogo), and SW Morocco (Anti-Atlas Mountains). Three subspecies have been recognized: D. draco subsp. draco, only present naturally in the Canary Islands (Almeida Pérez in Bot. Macaronés. 24: 17–38. 2003); D. draco subsp. caboverdeana Marrero Rodr. & R.S. Almeida, distributed in Cape Verde (Marrero & Almeida Perez in Int. J. Geobot. Res. 2: 35–40. 2012), included, however, by some authors in D. draco subsp. draco; and D. draco subsp. ajgal Benabid & Cuzin, only present in SW Morocco (Benabid & Cuzin in Compt. Rend. Acad. Sci. Paris, Sér. 3, Sci. Vie 320: 267–277. 1997). Asparagus draco L. (Sp. Pl., ed. 2: 451. 1762 [‘Draco’]) is the currently recognized basionym of the widely accepted name Dracaena draco. However, the first reference of Linnaeus to this species was as “Yucca draconis” (in Amoen. Acad. 3: 407. 1756; non Y. draconis L., Sp. Pl.: 319. 1753), a designation not validly published. Although the provenance indicated by Linnaeus in the protologue of A. draco is “Habitat in India orientali”, the name is based on the dragon tree that was cultivated in Portugal and Spain from the Canary Islands, and was illustrated and described in detail by Carolus Clusius (Rar. Stirp. Hisp.: 12. 1576; Rar. Pl. Hist.: 1. 1601). Asparagus draco was lectotypified by Bos (in Regnum Veg. 127: 43. 1993) on Clusius's illustration “Draco” (l.c. 1601: 1) (image available at https://bibdigital.rjb.csic.es/viewer/13800/?offset=7#page=14&) (see also Bos in Agric. Univ. Wageningen Pap. 84: 16. 1984; Ramón-Laca Menéndez de Luarca in Anales Jard. Bot. Madrid 55: 422–423, 425–426, fig. 2. 1997; Jarvis, Order out of Chaos: 119, 325, 487. 2007). The Clusius illustration was reproduced from the previously published drawing “Draco arbor” by Clusius (l.c. 1576: 12) (image available at https://bibdigital.rjb.csic.es/viewer/14854/?offset=1#page=12&). According to Whitehead & al. (in Arch. Nat. Hist. 16: 15–32. 1989), this drawing was made by the Flemish Renaissance painter Pieter van der Borcht (1545–1608) commissioned by Clusius, and is preserved at the Jagiellonian Library in Kraków (Poland). In 1751, at the invitation of Ferdinand VI (1713–1759), Linnaeus sent Pehr Loefling (1729–1756; also Löfling) to Spain (see Loefling, Iter Hispan.: 3–6. 1758). Over the course of the next two years, Loefling studied and collected the Iberian flora. In November 1757, Daniel Scheidenburg (1720–?), chaplain of the Swedish legation in Madrid, had some of Loefling's manuscripts copied and translated into Swedish and sent to Linnaeus (Gunckel Lüer in Revista Univ. (Santiago) 43 [Anales Acad. Chilena Ci. Nat. 22]: 29. 1958; González Bueno & Basante, José Hortega (1703–1761): La peripecia vital e intelectual de un boticario ilustrado: 185. 2015). These materials and the letters that Linnaeus received directly from Loefling are the basis of the posthumous Iter Hispanicum (1758), which summarizes the results of Loefling's botanical work in Portugal and Spain, and also Venezuela (Tellería in Soc. Geogr. Española 28: 116–123. 2007; Dorr & Wiersema in Taxon 59: 1245–1262, 1571–1577. 2010). On 28 September 1751, Loefling sent to Linnaeus a letter (available at http://linnean-online.org/777772239/ and published in Loefling, l.c.: 13–17) that contained in the margins the first Latin description of the flowers and fruits of an “Arbor draconis” (see Loefling, l.c.: 16). Two years after he found the plant in Lisbon (Alcantara Gardens, Lisbon, Portugal), Loefling (l.c.: 97) saw it again in the garden of the Capuchin Fathers of Cádiz (Spain) and commissioned Pedro Virgilio (1699–1776; a surgeon friend of José Ortega) to send flowers, fruits and a living specimen to Linnaeus (González Bueno & Basante, l.c.). Linnaeus, in the preface to Iter Hispanicum (Loefling, l.c.: Fóretal [xii]), mentions the discovery of the dragon tree as one of the important achievements of Loefling's trip to Spain. Apparently, the material that was studied by Loefling is not preserved (López González in Lagascalia 31: 200. 2011), the species name does not appear in the handwritten list of his herbarium at LINN (see, e.g., letter L0000 from Loefling to Linnaeus [vol. IX: 433, available at http://linnean-online.org/777772280/]), and we have not found any original material (e.g., at LINN, S, H, SBT, BM). The name “Asparagus Draconis” appeared as an entry in the 3-page “Index Plantarum rarior. Hispanicarum” (pp. 302–304) supplied by Linnaeus (see Cecchi & al. in Taxon 63: 1132. 2014), as editor, to Iter Hispanicum. The index entry (Loefling, l.c.: 303) references discussion by Loefling on pp. 15–16, 23, 25, 87–88 [“83”], and 97 where descriptive matter can be found under his entries for “ARBOR DRACONIS” (pp. 15, 87), “Arbor Draconis” (pp. 23, 25) or “ARBOR DRACO” (p. 97), both of which were associated (pp. 15, 97) with Clusius. Although Asparagus draconis L. has been overlooked or ignored, it is a validly published name according to the rules of the Shenzhen Code (Turland & al. in Regnum Veg. 159. 2018). Thus, Asparagus draconis is the earliest available name for the species later called “A. Draco” by Linnaeus (l.c. 1762). López González (l.c. 2011: 203) treated these two names as orthographical variants (Art. 61.2) (various spelling forms: nominative: draco and genitive: draconis), taking the “correct name” to be Dracaena draconis (L.) L. (l.c. 1767), based on Asparagus draconis L., thereby accepting that the lectotypification by Bos (l.c. 1993) of the orthographic variant “A. draco” would apply as well to A. draconis. In so doing, López González did not use the term “here designated” or an equivalent (Shenzhen Code Art. 7.11), such that if A. draconis and A. draco are not considered orthographic variants but rather independent names, the former remains untypified. The question of whether ‘draconis’ and ‘draco’ can be considered orthographic variants may be a debatable one. While one is a noun in the genitive and the other a [nominative] noun in apposition, they represent different inflectional forms of the same Latin third declension noun, derived from the Greek δράκων. Linnaeus's usages in 1758 and 1762 both referenced Clusius's (l.c.) “Arbor draconis” [the tree of the dragon] or “Draco arbor” [the dragon tree]. Curiously, Linnaeus did not cite his earlier usage (or Iter Hispanicum) in the protologue of Asparagus draco, but he did mention Loefling in his comment under A. draco, as he had in conjunction with his earlier usage of “Yucca draconis” (l.c. 1756). So there seems to be no doubt that the orthographies used by Linnaeus both apply to the same plant that, in the absence of any other original material, would have to be typified on the Clusius illustration, as achieved by Bos (l.c. 1993), so interpreted by López González (l.c. 2011), and accepted here. As orthographic variants of the same name (Art. 61.2), Asparagus draconis predates A. ‘draco’; therefore, the first validly published spelling should be adopted in Dracaena Vand. ex L. (Art. 61.1), and current usage of D. ‘draco’ would need to be corrected (Art. 61.4) as no justification exists under Art. 60 for Linnaeus's correction of his original orthography, the genitive noun ‘draconis’ being perfectly acceptable as a specific epithet (Art. 23.1). However, the spelling D. ‘draconis’ is almost unknown to the taxonomic community, while that of D. ‘draco’ is consistently used for the taxon (e.g., Byström in Acta Horti-Gotoburgensis 23: 179–214. 1960; Symon in J. Arnold Arbor. 55: 51–58. 1974; López González, Árbol. Arbust. Peníns. Ibér. 1: 1418. 2001; Ruiz de la Torre, Fl. Mayor: 281. 2006; Almeida Pérez, l.c.; Wilkin & al. in Kew Bull. 67: 697–705. 2012; Krawczyszyn & Krawczyszyn in Trees 28: 757–768. 2014; Jura-Morawiec & Tulik in Flora 213: 1–5. 2015; Nadezhdina & al. in Funct. Pl. Biol. 42: 1092–1105. 2015; Rivas-Martínez & al. in Int. J. Geobot. Res. 7: 21. 2017; Klimko & al. in Pl. Syst. Evol. 304: 1041–1055. 2018; Rivas-Martínez & al., Naturalia Cantabricae 8 Especial (3): 116. 2020). A Google Scholar search on 28 July 2020 for the former binomial's orthography returned just 2 references, whereas 2440 were returned for the latter. For the purpose of nomenclatural stability, we therefore propose conservation of Asparagus draco L. (‘draconis’) with that spelling under Art. 14.11. Rejection of this proposal would have an undesirable consequence because the spelling overwhelmingly in current use, “Dracaena draco”, would need to be replaced by “D. draconis”. PPFG, https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7595-9302 JMML, https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1565-7454 We are grateful to Dr. Ginés A. López González for his help in revising the manuscript. We thank Dr. John Wiersema and Dr. John McNeill for their advice, assistance, and valuable comments that improved this proposal.