The Homeria Species of Thunberg's Herbarium

Abstract

Thunberg's South African collections contain the type material for four species which conform to current concepts of Homeria. A detailed examination of the type material in the Thunberg Herbarium has resulted in selection of lectotypes for three of these species, where more than one sheet of a species was present. Homeria collina (Thunb.) Vent and H. umbellata (Thunb.) Lewis remain as presently interpreted. However, the name polyanthos L.f., as currently understood is misapplied and is an earlier name for H. lilacina L. Bol. The species at present called M. polyanthos now becomes M. bipartita L. Bol. The type of the fourth species, M. crispa, is incomplete, but it is very likely that it is simply a crisped-leafed form of the widespread Karoo species H. rogersii L. Bol. for which it is an earlier synonym. No new combinations in Homeria are made here. The genus is currently under investigation, and the definition of Homeria and the related is being revised. Homeria is a genus of some 30 species of Iridaceae-Irideae, endemic in southern Africa. Species are concentrated in the Cape Region of South Africa, and, where they occur, are generally very common plants. Strangely, Thunberg's collection from the Cape, now housed in the herbarium of the Institute for Systematic Botany, University of Uppsala, Sweden, has few specimens of the genus, and from these only four species were described. This is most likely because Thunberg thought there were only a few species where today we recognize many, and so he collected no more specimens once he felt he had gathered the basic types. Thunberg, and as well the younger Linnaeus, who worked on Thunberg's collections, considered Homeria indistinguishable from genera such as Aristea, Ferraria, Tigridia, and Bobartia, and they placed species of all these genera in Moraea. True species of they regarded as Iris, and Thunberg collected a large number of species of true Moraea, a very variable genus at the Cape. Of the many species of Moraea which Linnaeus fil. and Thunberg described, the following four are Homeria-like. The first is M. polyanthos L.f. (1781); followed by M. collina, M. umbellata and M. crispa, all described by Thunberg (1787). In modern times, N. E. Brown (1928) examined Thunberg's Iridaceae, including the few Homeria species. I have recently examined the specimens in question, not always agreeing with Brown's conclusions. The sheets are listed below by species with the numbers assigned to them on the microfiche of Thunberg's herbarium. 1. collina Thunb. 1209 Specimen has a large pale flower; anthers 7 mm long, slightly diverging; tepals ca. 40 mm long, 15 mm wide; ovary 12 mm long. A good match for the common Cape Peninsula species now known as H. collina (Thunb.) Salisb. This specimen is the lectotype.