Taxonomic Notes on Tropical African Species of Protea

Abstract

The following notes arise from simultaneous preparation of accounts of the genus Protea for Flora Zambesiaca (by S. M. Chisumpa and R. K. Brummitt) and for Flora of Tropical East Africa (R. K. Brummitt). The taxonomic revision was carried out jointly by both authors throughout. The herbarium work was done largely in 1982 and 1985 when S. M. Chisumpa worked at Kew for nine and six months respectively. Joint field study was undertaken in Zambia in 1984, and both of us were then already familiar with many taxa in the field in Zambia or Malawi. We are indebted to Dr J. P. Rourke (Kirstenbosch) for generous advice and discussion in the light of his knowledge of the South African species, though the decisions taken here are ours alone. The tropical African species of Protea were thoroughly revised by Beard (1963), who introduced order into the previous chaos which had arisen from the excessively narrow species concepts of previous authors such as De Wildeman (1923) and Hauman (1944, 1948 etc.). His revision was based to a considerable degree on field observation, and it is of particular value that Beard visited the type localities of the names of many species described by earlier authors. He also examined type specimens of nearly all earlier names. Thus a firm foundation was laid by Beard for subsequent workers to build on. Since publication of Beard's revision a surprising amount of new and interesting material has been collected. We are grateful to the directors of the herbaria at the British Museum (BM), Brussels (BR, BRLU and BRVU), Coimbra (COI), Dar es Salaam (DSM), Nairobi (EA), Oxford (FHO), Lisbon (LISC), Zomba (MAL), St. Louis (MO), Kitwe (NDO), Pretoria (PRE) and Harare (SRGH) for making their collections available to us during our work, and to Dr P. Hiepko and Dr O. Hilliard for kindly providing information on and photocopies of specimens at Berlin (B) and Pietermaritzburg (NU). Like Beard, we have appreciated the value of field study, and between us have seen in the field about half of the taxa discussed here. Nonetheless, it is clear to us that further problems still await elucidation, and a number of taxa are still inadequately known. We hope to follow the present notes with a comprehensive synopsis of the tropical species to complement the monographic work of Rourke (1980) on the South African species.