Rhynchospora longisetis R. Br.

2. Rhynchospora longisetis R. Br., Prodr.: 230. 1810.

Robert Brown, while describing R. longisetis, mentioned only “Littora Novae Hollandiae intra tropicum, tam orientalia quam septentrionalia, quorum ptiora, praesertim in vicinitate Endeavour River, et Bay of Inlets, ab Illust. Banks primùm explorata, nuper a Sandy Cape ad insulas Cumberland Isles dictas, necnon septentrionalium Carpentaria et Arnhem’s Land in expeditione suprà memoratâ lustravi”. Thus, according to Brown, this species is based on Banks collection from “Nova Hollandia” without any specific collection number. However, the type specimen of this species at BM, annotated by R. Brown as R. longisetis, has the collection number 5993. CLARKE (1908) cited “R. Brown no. 5993 p.p. collected from North Australia” as one of the syntypes of R. marginata C. B. Clarke. KUKENTHAL (1949) replaced the name of R. marginata Kük. (because it is a later homonym of R. marginata Steud.) for R. submarginata and again cited “R. Brown no. 5993 p.p. as the type of R. submarginata Kükenth. ”. Therefore, it seems when CLARKE (1908) studied the specimen “R. Brown no. 5993”, it was a mixture of two species, R. longisetis and R. submarginata (= R. marginata C. B. Clarke). Since the specimen “R. Brown no. 5993” is now associated with two species, the BM specimen is selected as lectotype of R. longisetis.

The collection number 5993 was assigned to R. longisetis in the mid 1870s when Robert Brown’s collection of dried Australian plants dating from 1801-1805 was first catalogued at the British Museum (GROVES & MOORE, 1989; MOORE & BEASLEY, 1997). This catalogue, nowadays called Bennett Register was instigated after Brown’s death by J. J. Bennett who had been Brown’s assistant at the museum. J. J. Bennett numbered the angiosperms from 2001 to 6371 and Cyperaceae members were numbered from 5288 to 6087 (http://florabase. dec. wa.gov.au/brown/). Therefore, although Robert Brown did not attribute any collection number to Rhynchospora longisetis, the number 5993 proposed by J. J. Bennett got associated with it during cataloging and hence needs to be mentioned during lectotype designation of this species.