How do we know if an observation is of the vulnerable wild hybrid, or one of the two+ commercially available named cultivars? I’m guessing the answer is to mark un-escaped cultivars as cultivated?
The SC Botanical Garden is in my county and once the location of a rare species is obscured, I don’t think I can see if it was seen in the garden or not. The most unusual things there were generally planted. If I can’t search by a fairly accurate location, how can I mark things in the garden as cultivated?
The hybrid page on iNat points to https://www.iucnredlist.org/species/38347/10113196 as evidence for the Vulnerable status, which lists Ilex attenuata as native to Brazil (Amazonas)? Is Brasil a placeholder for “data-not-available” like it’s location 0, 0 on the map? And there are no recorded observations? Is Ilex attenuata even the same thing as Ilex × attenuata?
Don’t they usually list 2 species with an ×? Like, the two parent species? What does it mean when they only list one species with an ×?
Yes, that’s what I would do. You could probably ID them as Ilex × attenuata if desired, but mark them cultivated if they’re growing in captivity.
I have run into this issue with other plants too, and it is frustrating. When in doubt, maybe leave a comment asking the observer whether it was growing wild or in a garden, and don’t mark it as “not wild” unless you’re confident. I’m not seeing any compelling reasons to obscure locations for this taxon despite its status on NatureServe—is there a great poaching or trampling risk (or is there such a risk for either parent species)? If not, I suggest raising a flag on the taxon page and proposing that the geoprivacy be opened. Just because a plant is rare or vulnerable, doesn’t mean that there’s a benefit to obscuring location data.
I don’t see it or the synonym listed on POWO, namely Ilex × nettletoniana. But hybrids are often excluded from keys, so I’m not surprised.
Not sure.
Some hybrids have “nothospecies” names, which are like regular species names (genus + epithet) but with the × symbol inbetween. This Wikipedia page has more information. Nothospecies often get named when the hybrids form stable lineages (e.g. Quercus × undulata), when a taxon previously described as a species in its own right is later determined to be a hybrid (e.g. Calochortus × indecorus), or when the hybrids belong to flashy or economically significant genera (e.g. orchids like Cypripedium × andrewsii).
Context clues are used for potential captive/cultivated organisms, as with other potential escapes. Unless the hybrid is fertile, the plant should be where it was seeded/planted, either naturally or by a human.
Feel free to flag the taxon for curator review of whether geoprivacy should be opened. This doesn’t seem like a taxon that necessitates obscuration (see elaboration below). You can flag the taxon by going to the taxon’s “About” page and clicking the curation drop-down menu below the seasonality graph.
FSUS doesn’t list/key a number of hybrids. I’m not sure what the plan is for hybrids on FSUS going forward, but Alan is generally pretty active on the FSUS Facebook page if you would like to ask directly.
There are two “Ilex attenuata” taxa: Ilex attenuata Steyerm. (synonym of Ilex pseudoumbelliformis T.R.Dudley) and Ilex × attenuata Ashe. The former seems responsible for the IUCN designation, and is why IUCN should be more explicit with what authorship/descriptions they are following for species concepts.
Named hybrids are written as Genusname × nothospeciesname. Unnamed hybrids are written as Genusname species1name × species2name. These are somewhat interchangeable, but the former is basically just a formal, standardized way to refer to a hybrid (nothospecies) that references specific authorship naming/characterizing the hybrid combination.
In the World Checklist of Vascular Plants, Ilex attenuata is a synonym for Ilex pseudoumbelliformis, which is probably correctly represented there as Brasillian:
So I think Kew Gardens linked to the wrong species on IUCN from their single Ilex × attenuata hybrid specimen. I have notified them as well. Those errors probably just got translated along to iNaturalist.
Of the 25 “Research Grade” observations of this hybrid on iNaturalist, only 11 don’t obviously have human constructions in the background. I flagged the obviously planted ones as captive/cultivated and left comments asking about the wild vs. captivated status on the others. I think the wild hybrid is indeed very rare.