Picea austropanlanica

Silba (1999)

Common names

None.

Taxonomic notes

This seems to be an imaginary species. Silba (1999), who is mainly noted for describing a huge number of taxa that have been reduced to synonymy with previously-known species, described it in a publication so obscure that I have never even seen it in a library, much less found a copy online (and Silba published 475 names in this journal). He based his description on specimens found in herbaria, and seems never to have seen the plant in habitat; he collected three infertile specimens from a Massachusetts arboretum that contained a single tree grown from a seed collected by E. H. Wilson on "Pan-Lan-Shan" (today called Balang Shan 巴朗山) in Sichuan. Presumably the species was named for that collection locality. (Wilson [1913] discusses the Pan-Lan-Shan pass in his chapter "Across the Sino-Thibetan Borderland", but he doesn't mention collecting a spruce there, even though one of his collections is the type for Picea likiangensis var. hirtella.) No one has collected P. austropanlanica or published anything about it since it was first described. The type specimen was collected by E. H. Wilson in China, western Sichuan, in 1910; Wilson identified it as Picea purpurea. The isotype was also collected by E. H. Wilson, near Songpan in Sichuan, in August-October 1910. Wilson also identified this specimen as P. purpurea. If a description of this species were available, it would be possible to assess whether it is synonymous with P. purpurea.

Description

None available.

Distribution and Ecology

China: Sichuan: Songpan area.

Remarkable Specimens

Ethnobotany

Observations

Remarks

Citations

Silba, John. 1999. J. Int. Conifer Preserv. Soc. 6:33.

Wilson, E. H. 1913. A Naturalist in Western China. Methuen & Co. Ltd.

See also

The species account at Threatened Conifers of the World.