New species of Iridaceae or just some weird variation?

Based on my long association with the International Aroid Society, and the numerous new species descriptions by Tom Croat in their journal, this seems to describe a very likely candidate for a new species.

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Wow… I guess I should start studying it then! Gotta travel to where it can be found the nearest to me, but it will be hard since I know the rainy season is over…

If you do get a chance to collect some samples, you might want to plan to collect some DNA-quality samples as well! Low-quality DNA acceptable for barcoding can usually be collected from regular herbaria specimens, but if you take care to dehydrate the material thoroughly as soon as it is picked in the field, the DNA quality will be much better. There is a video tutorial for how to collect good quality samples for DNA extraction from plant leaves here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wZHxvQvz-4w
Alternatively you can freeze the leaves to preserve their DNA, but they need to get either completely dehydrated or frozen within 12 hours of being picked to save the DNA.
Anyways not sure if you are interested in that but if you are, it is good to plan it ahead!

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Great! Sounds like you’ve put a lot of thought into this and I encourage you to pursue figuring this puzzle out.

If you haven’t already, you should really add herbarium research to your list of things to do. Ultimately, you have to cite specimens if you publish a new species (again, a bare minimum requirement for publishing a new species). Looking at photos of specimens is great, but it’s no substitute for seeing them in person. And honestly, if your doing anything taxonomy based, you should be working with specimens anyway.

This might be sufficient for a description, but important to point out that it is AN isotype. An isotype, by definition, is a duplicate of the holotype unless it is designated as a lectotype (in which case the other isotypes become isolectotypes if my nomenclatural memory is still good). In my experience, if there is one isotype, there’s generally more than one (in this case, there are at least two when searched on JSTOR plants). This probably won’t matter, but there are some cases where the holotype and some isotypes actually represent different species. As such, it’s best if you can track down the holotype unless there is no geographic overlap between the two forms and you can be relatively certain that the holotype and all isotypes do actually represent the same morphotype. If you want to do a deep dive into the kinds of types, you can check out the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants (used to be international code of botanical nomenclature): https://www.iapt-taxon.org/nomen/main.php

I hope you’ll be able to look into this further. Perhaps you could try tracking down the original description of the species (more info here: https://www.tropicos.org/name/16603497; this site can be great for finding older literature: https://www.biodiversitylibrary.org/) and more specimens (my go to is GBIF with only including occurrences with photos: https://www.gbif.org/occurrence/search; some other online herbaria are good and you might try Kew). Flower color is often included in specimen information. In general, it’s good to check against every name of the genus you can get your hand on that is anywhere near your area. You might even try checking names from Venezuela, Ecuador, Bolivia, and Argentina just to be sure you didn’t miss something (you might check out this: http://legacy.tropicos.org/projectwebportal.aspx?pagename=Home&projectid=83).

Just so you know, if you get to key construction, its better not to use flower color as the only key characteristic in a couplet. It’s useful, but is often less stable than structural characteristics and subject to fading when turned into a specimen.

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@astra_the_dragon All these sources obviously apply well to Euphorbia too, so you may find them interesting. They are my go to sources for learning a new species I have the name of when I have no frame of reference going into it.

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Here’s a copy of the original description of H. huilense (76 Mb download, starts on page 464). It includes a black and white photo, as well as habitat description and key to the genus. There’s a detailed description in Latin.

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Thank you. It’s not a new species as I suspected. It’s exactly the same as H. huliense. I’ll correct the IDs.

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Glad you got an answer! I hope you’ll be willing to continue following up with identifications for this genus in future observations too. It really helps a lot to have more informed identifiers sharing information like this on iNaturalist.

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Of course :) I’m the top identifier on Peru for both Amarylidaceae and Iridaceae, and I plan to expand my range to Nytaginaceae and other localized genera… Thanks for your contribution here, I heavily appreciated it!

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Congratulations on noticing this mystery! I don’t know if this species has been collected very much since its description, but at least on iNat you seem to have resurrected a “forgotten” species and recognized an important range expansion. :tada: :confetti_ball:

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Hey guys! I had forgotten about this thread, but recently another sighting of H. huilense appeared: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/74325808, on the other side of the Andes Mountains.
Could this “forgotten” species be actually the most widely distributed of the genus?

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The original specimens are all from Colombia, so unless things have changed a lot since 1946, its range extends at least that far.

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