Oreocharis xieyongii, an unusual new species of Gesneriaceae from western Hunan, China

Zhen-Yu Lv; Ziyoviddin Yusupov; Dai-Gui Zhang; Ya-Zhou Zhang; Xiao-Shuang Zhang; Nan Lin; Komiljon Tojibaev; Hang Sun; Tao Deng

doi:10.1016/j.pld.2021.11.008

Oreocharis xieyongii, an unusual new species of Gesneriaceae from western Hunan, China

Plant Divers. 2021 Dec 3;44(2):222-230. doi: 10.1016/j.pld.2021.11.008. eCollection 2022 Mar.

Authors

Zhen-Yu Lv^{1

2}, Ziyoviddin Yusupov^{1

3

4}, Dai-Gui Zhang⁵, Ya-Zhou Zhang^{1

3}, Xiao-Shuang Zhang^{1

5}, Nan Lin^{1

3}, Komiljon Tojibaev^{1

4}, Hang Sun¹, Tao Deng¹

Affiliations

¹ CAS Key Laboratory for Plant Diversity and Biogeography of East Asia, Kunming Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming 650204, Yunnan, China.
² School of Life Sciences, Yunnan Normal University, Kunming 650500, Yunnan, China.
³ University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China.
⁴ Institute of Botany, Academy of Sciences of Uzbekistan, Tashkent 100053, Uzbekistan.
⁵ Key Laboratory of Plant Resources Conservation and Utilization, Jishou University, Jishou 416000, Hunan, China.

Abstract

A new species, Oreocharis xieyongii T. Deng, D.G. Zhang & H. Sun, from Hunan Province, central China, is described. The combination of purple zygomorphic corolla with longer adaxial lobes and exserted stamens defines the species and discriminates it from all other current Oreocharis species. Morphological traits of the new species were compared to those of two similar species, Oreocharis xiangguiensis and O. rubrostriata. Phylogenetic analysis indicates that the new species is nested within the Oreocharis. Although only half of Oreocharis species were included in our study, evolutionary character analysis indicates that the ancestral states of the genus are likely the purple corolla, longer abaxial lip and inserted stamens. The longer adaxial lip is perhaps an apomorphy and only present in O. xieyongii and O. rubrostriata. Both morphological and molecular evidence suggest that O. xieyongii is a taxon new to science.

Keywords: China; Gesneriaceae; Morphology; Phylogeny; Taxonomy.