Solanum formonense O.E. Schulz ex O. Schmidt var. parvifolium O.E. Schulz ex O. Schmidt, Repert. Spec. Nov. Regni Veg. 32: 92. 1933

Type: Haiti. Massif de la Hotte, western group, Les Anglais, Morne l’Etang, 1400 m, 21 Jul 1928, H. Ekman H.10365 (lectotype, S [S04-2911], designated here).

Distribution. Known only from the montane cloud forests of Hispaniola (Haiti and the Dominican Republic), from 1000-1800 m elevation.

Representative specimen. Dominican Republic.Prov. Peravia, Zanoni & Pimentel 40315 (JBSD, MO, NY).

Although Lamarck’s protologue indicates that the plant collected by Joseph Martin came from Martinique, Solanum crotonoides has never been collected there. A similar situation exists for S. pyrifolium (Dulcamaroid clade), also collected by Martin from “Martinique”. I suspect that Martin did in fact also visit Hispaniola (the locality for his type collection of Aquartia microphylla is “S. Domingo”, see below) or that Martin used Martinique as a broad locality covering most of the Caribbean region, and that both these plants are true Hispaniolan endemics.

In describing S. formonense, Schulz and Schmidt did not designate which of the two varieties was typical. Sheets of both syntypes are held at S; Ekman H.10365 (S04-2911, Fig. 2b) is in excellent condition and is here used to lectotypify both the species and the variety. Ekman H.7461 is the lectotype for var. grandifolium, but is not figured here.

The lectotype of S. hoplophorum (Fig. 2c) is a very robust, prickly male plant (Fuertes 1023), showing that combination of characters that Dunal (1814) noted in describing S. reticulatum as the “hermaphrodite” of S. crotonoides (which is a dioecious species, see Knapp & al., 1998). Both varieties of S. formonense are female plants.