IMAGE: Bright red fruit of Monanthotaxis komorensis
Combining modern molecular methods, with more traditional morphological ones, a recent revision of the custard apple genus Monanthotaxis has revealed a nonet of new species.
Lying unnoticed on shelves, some of these species had to wait for many decades to be discovered with methods, unavailable at the time of their collection. Some collected 40 years ago, some as far back as a 100, the nine new species are described in the open access journal Phytokeys to showcase the importance of herbarium collections in Botany.
"Although for many of the new species good flowering material became available only recently, this does prove the importance of herbaria, and the need for exploring their collections," explains the lead author, PhD student Paul H. Hoekstra, Naturalis Biodiversity Center and Wageningen University. "On the other hand, using DNA techniques we were able to link recently collected sterile collections to several of these poorly collected species, enabling us to improve their conservation assessment."
Confined to tropical Africa and Madagascar, species from this genus all share similar features such as a typical climbing habit and bluish-green or glaucous leaves.
Click here to see more...