The Genus Kleinia (Compositae) in North Africa and the Canary Islands

Abstract

K. anteuphorbium (L.) Haw. is a plant which has been familiar to botanists and horticulturists since the sixteenth century. Dodonaeus recorded that it was brought to Europe in 1570 and by 1596 Gerard was growing it in England. It proved to be a shy-flowering species, as Dillenius noted in 1732 (Hort. Elth. 63: t. 55) and it was not until 1874 that Thomas Hanbury induced it to flower in his garden near Mentone, sending live material that same year to J. D. Hooker at Kew, to be figured in Curtis's Botanical Magazine. The misconception that K. anteuphorbium is a South African species dates back to Linnaeus (1753: 834) where under Cacalia anteuphorbium he stated 'Habitat in Aethiopia' (see W. T. Stearn in Sp. Plant., Ray Soc. edition: 143 (1957)). Willdenow (1804: 1726) also recorded it as a South African species ('Habitat ad Cap. b. Spei') as did Harvey and Sonder (1864-65: 319), adding that the species is cultivated in Europe. De Candolle (1838: 338) went one step further and recognised two distinct species, K. anteuphorbium from 'Cap. b. Spei' and K. pteroneura from Mogador, Morocco. Given that all these authors were referring to the same taxon, the reference of K. anteuphorbium to Ethiopia and to South Africa must be considered erroneous, as there is no doubt that both names under discussion refer to the Moroccan plant, while the live material collected recently in Morocco confirms the presence there of a single endemic taxon. The discrepancies between the two plants, as described by J. D. Hooker in Curtis's Botanical Magazine (1872: tab. 5945; 1874: tab. 6099) at first seem to support the existence of two distinct taxa. The differences are mainly in the illustrations which show different vegetative stages and dissimilar inflorescences. If, however, one takes into consideration a note and an illustration by Thomas Hanbury's brother Daniel, dated 1874, addressed to Daniel Oliver, and preserved at Kew, it is possible to account for these differences. As is apparent from his note, Hanbury suspected that K. anteuphorbium and K. pteroneura are one and the same species, and his pencil sketch of K. anteuphorbium confirms that suspicion, matching well with the Fitch illustration