A tale of traded specimens, or what to know when selecting types from Ernst Ule’s collections

Abstract

AbstractMany Brazilian plant names are based on specimens gathered by European naturalists working in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Among these explorers is Ernst Ule, a German naturalist who collected profusely in Brazil. Ule’s specimens were largely used to publish names before the need to indicate types for valid publication and, hence, many of those names need to be typified. Because typification is not always a straightforward process, we use examples from Mimosa and Paepalanthus to show how an understanding of the historical background of these collections is necessary to support nomenclatural work with names based on specimens he gathered. We present a set of guidelines for typification of names based on his collections and, as examples, we provide lectotypifications for 35 species of Mimosoid legumes.