Viola lilliputana sp. nov. (Viola sect. Andinium, Violaceae), one of the world's smallest violets, from the Andes of Peru

Abstract

A new violet species of Viola Sect. Andinium, Viola lilliputana, is described from a single dry puna locality on an extensive intermontane plateau southeast of Cerro Palla Palla in the high Andes of Ayacucho Department in southern Peru. This diminutive rosulate violet is evidently among the smallest in the world and probably one of the smallest terrestrial dicots. It belongs to a distinctive species group with pinnatifid leaves that is endemic to central and southern Peru, including V. hillii, V. membranacea and V. weibelii. The new species is similar to V. weibelii in its large, strongly adnate stipules, elongate leaf lobes and dilated unappendaged style with ventral stigmatic orifice. It differs conspicuously from all other members of the pinnatifid-leaved group in its conduplicate leaf blades, straight, mostly nonoverlapping, oblong-lanceolate to broadly elliptical lobes with obtuse to rounded apices, and large basally fused pedicel bractlets. Despite many new collections of vascular plants from the high Andes of Peru and northern Bolivia in recent decades, this distinctive new species is still known only from its type locality, collected on the Iltis-Ugent expedition from November 1962 to January 1963.