Determining the type locality and collector of Nylander’s South African lichens

Abstract

Background: In 1868, Nylander described 15 new lichen taxa from collections made near Durban, South Africa. The locality was not specified and the collector was identified only as ‘Miss Armstrong’.Objectives: To identify the collector and type locality of Nylander’s species.Method: Scientific literature, maps, letters, notebooks and genealogical sources were consulted to reconstruct the provenance of the specimens.Results: ‘Miss Armstrong’ was likely Olivia Armstrong; she collected in the Karkloof area of the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands.Conclusion: This investigation facilitates future work to determine whether the species described and reported by Nylander are still extant in the same locality.

Two new species of Leptogium (Collemataceae) with transversely septate ascospores from East Africa

“…Leptogium chloromeloides, on the other hand, seem to lack both apothecial paraplectenchyma tous tissues. Even though the original description lacks the details of apothecial anatomy (Nylander, 1869) and the type specimen in DBN (Medeiros, 2019) was not available for loan, an isotype in G (G00047541, Afrique du Sud; Wood, J.M. 326) was most helpfully sent for inspection.…”

Contribution to a modern treatment of Graphidaceae biodiversity in South Africa: genera of tribe Graphideae with hyaline ascospores

“…by Acharius (1804). Nylander (1868) published the first taxonomic paper that described new lirelliform Graphidaceae from South Africa, based on specimens collected near Pietermaritzburg by Olivia Armstrong and William Mackenzie (Medeiros 2019). His article described one new species in the family and reported several records of previously described species.…”