A synopsis of the Asian and Australasian genus Phanera Lour. (Cercideae: Caesalpinioideae: Leguminosae) including 19 new combinations

Abstract

Historically, many authors of regional accounts of the Leguminosae (Fabaceae) tribe Cercideae divided the caesalpinioid genus Bauhinia sens. lat. into several segregate genera including the genus Phanera. However, during the last fifty years, Bauhinia has more often been recognised as a broadly circumscribed taxon with Phanera reduced to a subgenus of Bauhinia sens. lat. The reinstatement of Phanera at generic rank based on molecular and morphological evidence has now been widely accepted, resulting in the need for new combinations in Phanera for many taxa described in Bauhinia. Some of those names have been published recently by other authors so here we make the necessary combinations for those taxa still lacking names in Phanera. In addition, we include all published Phanera binomials and trinomials here and to each assign a status of accepted name, synonym or excluded name. The recent reinstatement of the New World genus Schnella to which c. 40 Phanera species were moved transforms Phanera into a strictly Asian and Australasian taxon. Phanera can be distinguished from Bauhinia sens. str. and from Schnella by a combination of morphological characters, but the morphological boundary with another closely related Asiatic genus, Lasiobema is unclear and warrants further investigation. We present a table comparing morphological characters of Phanera, Schnella, Lasiobema and Bauhinia sens. str.

Cheniella gen. nov. (Leguminosae: Cercidoideae) from southern China, Indochina and Malesia

“…Nevertheless, Phanera is still a somewhat heterogeneous taxon. In particular, as several authors have already noted, the generic boundary of Phanera with regard to Lasiobema warrants more detailed research (Hao et al 2003;Lewis & Forest 2005;Mackinder & Clark 2014;Trethowan et al 2015). Sinou et al (2009) indicated, albeit with weak support, that based on a phylogenetic analysis of nucleotide sequence data from the cpDNA trnL-F region, Asian Phanera are closely related to Lasiobema; although sampling in that study was very limited.…”

“…This genus, which is most diverse in Malesia, remains the largest of the segregate genera reinstated from Bauhinia s. lat. (Mackinder & Clark 2014). Nevertheless, Phanera is still a somewhat heterogeneous taxon.…”

Type specimens of names in <i>Bauhinia</i> and <i>Phanera</i> (Fabaceae: Caesalpinioideae) at Central National Herbarium, Howrah (CAL)

“…The protologues of all the names have been studied and the current status of the names has been given after scrutiny of relevant literature, viz., de Wit (1956); Thothathri (1965); Larsen and Larsen (1996); Govaerts (1996); Sinou et al (2009) ;Bandyopadhyay et al (2012); Bandyopadhyay (2013a); Mackinder and Clark (2014); Bandyopadhyay (2014) and Bandyopadhyay and Ghoshal (2015).…”

Seven new combinations in Phanera (Fabaceae: Caesalpinioideae: Cercideae)

“…In five recent publications (Wunderlin 2011, Bandyopadhyay et al 2012, Bandyopadhyay 2013, Mackinder and Clark 2014, Krishnaraj 2014), a total of 73 new combinations have been made in Phanera Lour. occurring in the Palaeotropical region because Bauhinia subgenus Phanera (Lour.)…”