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A NEW SPECIES OF ORNITHOBOEA (GESNERIACEAE) FROM VIETNAM
D.J.MIDDLETON - Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20A Inverleith Row, Edinburgh EH3 5LR, Scotland, UK. E-mail: [email protected]
NGOCSAMLY - Institute of Tropical Biology, 85 Tran Quoc Toan Street, Dst 3, Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. E-mail: [email protected]
There is an area of karst limestone in Kien Giang Province of Vietnam located in the southwest of the Mekong basin, straddling the border between Vietnam and Cambodia. It consists of a number of small, strongly karstified and isolated hills, and features a dramatic landscape with peculiar vegetation that is unknown in other parts of southern Vietnam or Cambodia. Since 1993 numerous species new to science and currently endemic to the Kien Giang hills have been discovered in caves and soils of the area and more are yet to be found (Deharveng et al., 1995; Vermeulen et al., 2007). Even new genera and supra-generic taxa of beetles and springtails have been collected, making the Kien Giang hills the richest hot-spot of endemism for deep soil fauna known in the tropics (L. Deharveng, pers. comm., 2004). Many plant taxa found in Kien Giang are extremely interesting, both in Southeast Asia and the rest of the world, including the recently described Begonia bataiensis Kiew (Truong et al., 2005).
The Institute of Tropical Biology (ITB) in Ho Chi Minh City is currently carrying out a project in the south of Vietnam funded by the MacArthur Foundation. Part of this research project is an exploration of karst limestone areas of Kien Giang Province. During recent field work by the second author in this area a previously undescribed species of Ornithoboea Parish ex C.B.Clarke was collected. This is described here as new.
The last revision of Ornithoboea was by Burtt (1958). It included 10 species, one of which, Ornithoboea leptonema B.L.Burtt, was described from Tonkin, Vietnam. According to Burtt (1958) the material of Ornithoboea parishii C.B.Clarke from
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Ornithoboea emarginata - Pictures: Ly Ngoc Sam - Institute of Tropical Biology |
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