Feedback request: Saxifraga rosacea (5427)

[John Hughes]

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Specimen #273535

Taxon:	Saxifragaceae: Saxifraga rosacea Moench ("Irish Saxifrage") named by Herbert William Pugsley long note by Pugsley re ID
Filed in taxon folder:	Saxifragaceae: Saxifraga rosacea Moench ("Irish Saxifrage")
Collected by:	Mr Allan Octavian Hume
Collection date:	26/6/1905
Locality:	Great Britain, VC49 Caernarvonshire, Twll Du, SH638588, rocks about and below Devil's Kitchen, Lake Idwal
communicated:	The South London Botanical Institute
ex herb:	Mr Herbert William Pugsley Mr Harold Stuart Thompson
Institution:	University of Birmingham (BIRM)
Image:
fruits/flowers:	mature flowers

Documented by keith barnett following initial work by john hughes on 8^th April 2009.

Checked by mossysal

Edit history

date	user	change
12/04/2009	keith barnett	Deleted locality: GB VC49 Twll Du SH638588 (place)
12/04/2009	keith barnett	Added locality: GB VC49 Lake Idwal, rocks about and below Devil's Kitchen, Lake Idwal SH638588 (place)
12/04/2009	keith barnett	Added provenance: exherb Mr Herbert William Pugsley
09/01/2010	mossysal	Deleted locality: GB VC49 Lake Idwal, rocks about and below Devil's Kitchen, Lake Idwal SH638588 (place)
09/01/2010	mossysal	Added locality: GB VC49 Twll Du, rocks about and below Devil's Kitchen, Lake Idwal SH638588 (place)
09/01/2010	mossysal	Added determiner: Mr Herbert William Pugsley
09/01/2010	mossysal	Added determiner's note: John William Haines

N.B. reporting of the edit history is currently fairly unclear and misleading. Most edits made to specimens appear as a pair of 'add' and 'delete' entries, which may not be together in the list. There are also often 'minor' edits, which are made automatically (rather than due to user activity), for example to merge synonym names.

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User comments about this sheet

john hughes wrote

This needs a better botanist than me, because if it is Sax.rosacea, it has not been seen in North Wales since 1978.Was it formerly known as S.decipiens as in Pugsley's note? To take seven complete plants of this rare taxon shows that the Victorian fern collectors were from alone in their depradations.

[mossysal]

A very interesting topic!
The specimens were collected as the relatively common ?S. hypnoides and later detted as S sponhemica by Pugsley (and IPNI/CTW (1952) put S. sponhemica = S. hypnoides). Stace (1997) says: "Certain examples of S hypnoides in N. Wales sugest past hybridisation with S. rosacea (=S. decipiens, CTW). So maybe this is one of them. I'm wondering who detted this specimen as S rosacea? It is hard to see the leaf tips online.
(BTW, CTW says S rosacea extinct in Caerns by 1952)

[David Price]

D.A.Webb regarded S. sponhemica as a ssp of S. rosacea.

[mossysal]

Although I accept what you say, isn't the point what Hume and Pugsley thought it was? And Pugsley clearly thought ("the rarer") S. decipiens and S. spohemica were different taxa. And reading Webb in Watsonia in 1951 it seems he was not sure even then about S. rosacea subsp sponhemica.

I would still be very interested to know who detted the specimen for digitising? How does the system work, and shouldn't the det. be somehow credited in the record as for any other herbarium sheet?

[David Price]

Perhaps the French should have a say: they call S. rosacea "Saxifrage Trompeuse".

[David Price]

My last remark was perhaps too flippant; after all, trompeuse is merely a translation of decipiens. My point about Webb's nomenclature was that it would lead to this plant being labelled 'S. rosacea' in the absence of any further critical examination.

[mossysal]

Yes, I see the logic now, thank you. But I still feel that Pugsley was effectively saying, it isn't A, it's A!