Primulina rubella sp. nov. (Gesneriaceae) from a limestone area in Guangdong, China

Abstract

A new species of Primulina (Gesneriaceae) from a limestone area in southern China, P. rubella L.H. Yang & M. Kang, is described and illustrated. The new species has purple‐red flowers and is thus similar to P. lijiangensis, but differs by its petiole, leaf blade, cyme, filament, stigma and ovary. In adition, a molecular phylogenetic reconstruction indicated that P. rubella and P. lijiangensis belong to quite different clades. Instead, P. rubella appears to be closely related to the sympatric P. qingyuanensis, although these two species are obviously differentiated both in terms of flower color and other vegetative and floral characters. The conservation status of P. rubella is assessed as ‘Critically Endangered’ (CR) according to the IUCN red list categories and criteria.

Primulina malipoensis (Gesneriaceae), a new species from Sino-Vietnamese border area

“…However, when flowering, they displayed uncommon yellow flowers. Flower colour has been used as an important character for the description of new Primulina species (Pan et al 2016, Yang et al 2017). Therefore, these plants soon caught the authors’ attention.…”