(2951) Proposal to conserve Malus domestica, nom. cons., against the additional name, M. sylvestris (Rosaceae)

Abstract

(2951) Malus domestica (Suckow) Borkh., Theor. Prakt. Handb. Forstbot.: 1272. 1803 (Pyrus malus var. domestica Suckow, Anfangsgr. Bot. 2: 332. 1786), [Angiosp.: Ros.], nom. cons. Typus: Herb. Linnaeus No. 647.3 (LINN) (typ. cons.). (=) Malus sylvestris (L.) Mill., Gard. Dict., ed. 8: Malus No. 1. 16 Apr 1768 (Pyrus malus var. sylvestris L., Sp. Pl.: 479. 1 Mai 1753), nom. rej. prop. Neotypus (vide Langenfelds, Apple-trees: 186. 1991): Latvia, “Dist. Madonensis, prope villula Grasi”, Langenfelds 105 (RIG). The oldest validly published name for the orchard apple when referred to the genus Malus Mill. is M. pumila Mill. (1768; Rosaceae; Mabberley & al. in Telopea 9: 421–430. 2001), but the opinion of the Nomenclature Committee for Vascular Plants (NCVP), namely that a proposal (Qian & al. in Taxon 59: 650–652. 2010) to reject this name in favour of M. domestica (Suckow) Borkh. (1803) be itself rejected, was reversed when the General Committee (by a very narrow majority) referred the proposal back to the NCVP, which, on a second vote, narrowly recommended the proposal be accepted after all. In consequence M. domestica is now conserved against M. pumila besides six other older names, some of which were added by the NCVP and the General Committee upon approval of the proposal's authors (Wilson in Taxon 66: 742. 2017). Published and unpublished molecular work (see Juniper & Mabberley, Extraord. Story Apple: 11. 2019; Sun & al. in Nat. Genet. 52: 1423–1432. 2020; Volk & al. in Frontiers Pl. Sci. (Online journal) 13: 1015658. 2022, https://doi.org/10.3389/fpls.2022.1015658) has shown that populations of the putative principal ancestor of the orchard apple, namely Malus sieversii (Ledeb.) M. Roem. of Central Asia, also include what are in fact hybrids with cultivars of M. domestica, while in eastern Europe and the Caucasus hybrids between M. domestica and the native M. sylvestris subsp. orientalis (Uglitzk.) Soó (M. orientalis Uglitzk.) are well known, and, in northern and western Europe, M. domestica hybridizes with the native M. sylvestris (L.) Mill. subsp. sylvestris far more readily than had previously been held. The inter-relationships of the three “wild” taxa have suggested that they may well represent eco-geographical races of a widespread ancestral Malus species (Juniper & Mabberley, l.c.: 28) and that these might therefore be better recognised at subspecies level (Mabberley in Juniper & Mabberley, l.c.: 244), as was in effect done long ago – by Soó (in Acta Bot. Acad. Sci. Hung. 9: 423. 1963). Acceptance of such a taxonomic solution would currently lead to the “wild” taxa being recognised as subspecies under Malus sylvestris (as in Soó, l.c.), a 1768 name against which M. domestica has not been conserved, so that the correct name for the orchard apple in this scenario would appear to be “M. sylvestris subsp. malus (L.) ined.” ≡ Pyrus malus L. subsp. malus, of Ehrhart in Hannover. Mag. 18: 223. 1780. To protect the lately conserved M. domestica in any such system to be proposed when the most recent molecular work is presented, M. sylvestris must now be added to the list of names to be rejected in favour of M. domestica. DJM, https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6082-5894 The author is, as ever, indebted to John Wiersema for advice in preparing this proposal.