A neotype and epitype are selected for Dracontium dubium Kunth. Dracontium changuango G. S. Bunting is treated as a synonym of D. dubium. Dracontium dubium Kunth was first collected by Richard Schomburgk during an expedition to Guyana (British Guiana) in 1840-1844 at the base of Mt. Curassawaka of the Kanuku Mountains, south of Nappi (ca. 3?22'N, 59034'W), and several living tubers were sent to the Botanical Garden of Berlin in 1843 (Roth, 1922: 387-388, 1923: 103). One plant bloomed in the Garden and was described by Kunth in the following year (Kunth, 1844). Schott (1860: 481) noted that there were fertile collections of this species at the Berlin Herbarium (B). However, no such specimen of D. dubium was seen by Engler in 1911, when he only cited Bluehte im Bot. Garten zu Berlin Sept. 1844 under the species. Schott (1860) might very likely have seen only live specimens of the species, since at Kunth's time garden plants were often described and illustrated without preparing herbarium specimens (Paul Hiepko, pers. comm.). Kunth had apparently made a drawing of the inflorescences and some floral details of the species, which was deposited in the Berlin herbarium (Engler, 1911: 38, fig. 14A-F). More than a decade after the discovery of D. dubium, Schott (1857), based on unspecified ovary and stigma details of the species, described the new genus Echidnium, giving the single species a new name, E. schomburgkii. In the following year, Schott (1858b: pl. 88) published a plate under the name E. schomburgkii, which copied Kunth's drawing but added an opened inflorescence and other floral details. Later, when he published the first comprehensive classification of the Araceae, Schott (1860) accepted the name E. schomburgkii, citing Dracontium dubium as a synonym. Under contemporary rules, E. schomburgkii is a superfluous name, since Schott should have used the name E. dubium for the transfer. Engler (1911) rectified this situation by publishing the combination Echidnium dubium (Kunth) Engler. Echidnium is ostensibly distinguished from Dracontium by having a unilocular ovary with two ovules (Schott, 1857), as opposed to a bior plurilocular ovary in Dracontium. However, these characters have been shown to be either spurious (Zhu, 1995) or not to be good generic characters in this group (Bogner, 1985; Hay, 1988; Zhu, 1996). The two plates originated from the typical material of D. dubium (Genera aroidearum, pl. 88, Schott, 1858b; Das Pflanzenreich, 4 (23C): p. 38, fig. 14AF, Engler, 1911) clearly demonstrated a plant of at least two locules. Schott's statement of a unilocular ovary was evidently erroneous, based on his own illustration. Zhu (1995, 1996) noted that unilocular ovaries do not occur in Dracontium, and this genus never has more than one ovule in each locule; these stand as generic traits of the genus. Therefore, Echidnium is accepted as a synonym of Dracontium, and D. dubium is the accepted name for the treated species. The selection of a neotype is indicated for the name Dracontium dubium Kunth, because no original material exists (Greuter et al., 1994, Art. 9.7). The fertile collections of this species studied by Schott (1860) were either living specimens and never preserved as herbarium specimens or were lost before Engler's time. The drawing made by Kunth (Engler, 1911) at the Berlin herbarium (B) was presumably destroyed during wartime, or otherwise lost (Paul Hiepko, pers. comm.). If Schomburgk made any herbarium collection in the field, this collection is also untraceable. Plate 88 (Fig. 1) in the Genera aroidearum (Schott, 1858b) was clearly based on a specimen of Schomburgk's collection of this taxon, and thus affords the most reliable reflection of the original description (Schott, NovoN 8: 101-103. 1998. This content downloaded from 157.55.39.113 on Sun, 15 May 2016 04:50:59 UTC All use subject to http://about.jstor.org/terms