Flag for Taxon: Sweet Spurge (Euphorbia atoto)
| Flagger | Content Author | Content | Reason | Flag Created | Resolved by | Resolution |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| caqalai | Sweet Spurge (Euphorbia atoto) |
Se Whistlers Flowers of the Pacific Island Seashare under Chamaesyce atoto |
Dec. 11, 2018 05:14:59 +0000 | nathantaylor |
Comments
Thx
It is the photograph of Euphorbia atoto that I was flagging. It does not match the description of this species in the Flora of China as the leaves in the photograph are toothed and the description in the flora and in Whistler are entire. I accept that Chamaesyce atoto (as shown in Whistlers book) is a synonym of E. atoto. Getting the full message into the flag was not possible. See https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/18953935
Regards
The photo is removed. The plant pictured appears to be E. psammageton and not E. atoto. I've known about this problem for some time, but have been reluctant to remove it for a couple of reasons. Firstly, I wanted to ID the species so I could add it to the correct species (I did that just now).
The second reason is more complicated and is as follows: There are some nomenclatural inconsistencies as the recent Australian treatment considers E. atoto endemic to Tahiti and, as such, should not be included in the Flora of China at all. If this is considered accurate, none of the photos on iNaturalist accurately represent E. atoto. If the photo is removed, undoubtedly, someone will add photos of plants that have been called E. atoto, but don't actually represent the species (at least, not in the strict sense), like the one in the link. I do want to wade into this problem to see if I can find a more appropriate name for the observations here, but that will take some time and there are a lot of Euphorbia complexes keeping my attention in North America at the moment. Hope that helps.
Resolved?
Well, the photo problem is resolved enough. The species complex problem isn't.
The POWO site has E. atoto as being in the south central Pacific but the photographs of the herbarium specimen has a tag "Flora of Madras" and appears to be a renaming of the specimen from E. halophila.
If it's a problem on POWO's end, then they're typically fast to respond. Email bi@kew.org to get it fixed.
@caqalai Until or unless there's a good treatment indicating what is and isn't E. atoto across the entire range of the complex, I don't think it's worth worrying too much about which photos are applied. If I take them down, they'll go back up as there are many observations that go under E. atoto s.l. and none apply E. atoto s.s. if Halford and Harris are to be believed. Hopefully, I'll get around to figuring it all out one of these days (or maybe someone else will). If I do, we can deal with the photos then.
Alternatively, if you'd like to look into it and summarize the literature in a way that I can understand, I'd be willing to look it over and help change the identifications. I'd need primary sources though. Citing POWO isn't enough (and in some cases isn't even a reliable source).
Okay thanks. It is unlikely I will be back on Nango Island any time soon to collect any material
Regards
If you can read French, you might start here: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/page/13740411#page/529/mode/1up
By the way, the specimen on POWO is the type of E. halophila which has previously been considered a synonym of E. atoto. I'm not sure what name the species applies to now, but POWO is clearly taking a broader view of the name E. atoto than Florence does. Regardless, the comment applies to POWO and not iNaturalist, so this flag is essentially resolved.
Plants of the World Online which is the official reference used for plants on the site still lists this under Euphorbia :
http://www.plantsoftheworldonline.org/taxon/urn:lsid:ipni.org:names:345695-1
An update would require it being proposed as a deviation.