The discovery, naming and typification of Michauxia campanuloides (Campanulaceae) with notes on its introduction into cultivation

Abstract

Michauxia campanuloides (Campanulaceae) is a biennial to short-lived perennial characterized by white to purple-suffused, deeply lobed corollas with narrow and strongly reflexed corolla lobes. It occurs widely on the eastern fringe of the Mediterranean area in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel. First collected by Leonhard Rauwolf as early as 1575, it was made known by him through the publication of a description and an illustration. His herbarium specimen, among the first collected in the Near East, survives in Leiden. More than two centuries had to pass until André Michaux and, independently, Jean Jacques Houtou de Labillardière collected M. campanuloides again and made specimens and seeds available to the botanical community in Paris. On the basis of living material, but including references to herbarium specimens, Charles-Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle was the first to provide a binomial for this striking plant. This paper focuses on the widely unappreciated record of herbarium specimens and printed illustrations, and lists and comments on early specimens collected in the wild as well as those cultivated in botanical gardens up to 1800. In addition, the name M. campanuloides is properly lectotypified.