A synopsis of the Asian and Australasian genus Phanera Lour. (Cercideae:

Historically, many authors of regional accounts of the Leguminosae (Fabaceae) tribe Cercideae divided the caesalpinioid genus Bauhinia sens. lat. into several segregate genera including the genus Phanera. However, during the last fifty years, Bauhinia has more often been recognised as a broadly circumscribed taxon with Phanera reduced to a subgenus of Bauhinia sens. lat. The reinstatement of Phanera at generic rank based on molecular and morphological evidence has now been widely accepted, resulting in the need for new combinations in Phanera for many taxa described in Bauhinia. Some of those names have been published recently by other authors so here we make the necessary combinations for those taxa still lacking names in Phanera. In addition, we include all published Phanera binomials and trinomials here and to each assign a status of accepted name, synonym or excluded name. The recent reinstatement of the New World genus Schnella to which c. 40 Phanera species were moved transforms Phanera into a strictly Asian and Australasian taxon. Phanera can be distinguished from Bauhinia sens. str. and from Schnella by a combination of morphological characters, but the morphological boundary with another closely related Asiatic genus, Lasiobema is unclear and warrants further investigation. We present a table comparing morphological characters of Phanera, Schnella, Lasiobema and Bauhinia sens. str

Data from: Phylogeny of the Detarioid Genera Cynometra and Maniltoa (Leguminosae)

The genus Cynometra (Leguminosae, Detarioideae) is a large, pantropical group of woody plants ranging in size from 5-50 meters. While many recent advances have been made in higher level legume systematics, many large genera still require more study to test their monophyly. Further, its relationship to the much smaller Pacific genus Maniltoa is unclear. Here we present the first broadly-sampled phylogeny of Cynometra and Maniltoa, based on molecular data from three chloroplast loci: matK, the trnL intron and the trnL intergenic spacer. Our analyses indicate that Cynometra is not monophyletic as currently circumscribed, as several researchers had previously suspected. We recover two strongly supported clades of Cynometra sensu lato; one that is most closely related to a clade consisting of the genera Dicymbe and Polystemonanthus and is composed of exclusively African taxa and another clade that is pantropical and is nested in a larger clade with the Scorodolphoeus group and the genera Normandiodendron, Neochevalierodendron, and Zenkerella. Futhermore, the genus Maniltoa is nested within the pantropical Cynometra clade and is also non-monophyletic. The two clades are each supported by several morphological characters that can be used to distinguish between them (e.g. inflorescence structure, pedicel articulation, fruit dehiscence). These results will be used to modify the classification by moving the relevant African taxa to a new genus and placing Maniltoa in synonymy with Cynometra

Fig. 10 in Cheniella gen. nov. (Leguminosae: Cercidoideae) from southern China, Indochina and Malesia

Fig. 10. Distribution of Cheniella glauca (Wall. ex Benth.) R.Clark & Mackinder comb. nov. and C. tenuiflora (Watt ex C.B.Clarke) R.Clark & Mackinder comb. nov.Published as part of Clark, Ruth P., Mackinder, Barbara A. & Banks, Hannah, 2017, Cheniella gen. nov. (Leguminosae: Cercidoideae) from southern China, Indochina and Malesia, pp. 1-37 in European Journal of Taxonomy 360 on page 31, DOI: 10.5852/ejt.2017.360, http://zenodo.org/record/383648

Cheniella gen. nov. (Leguminosae: Cercidoideae) from southern China, Indochina and Malesia

For much of the last thirty years, the caesalpinioid genus Bauhinia has been recognised by numerous authors as a broadly circumscribed, ecologically, morphologically and palynologically diverse pantropical taxon, comprising several subgenera. One of these, Bauhinia subg. Phanera has recently been reinstated at generic rank based on a synthesis of morphological and molecular data. Nevertheless, there remains considerable diversity within Phanera. Following a review of palynological and molecular studies of Phanera in conjunction with a careful re-examination of the morphological heterogeneity within the genus, we have found strong evidence that the species of Phanera subsect. Corymbosae are a natural group that warrant generic status. We describe here the genus Cheniella R.Clark & Mackinder gen. nov. to accommodate them. It comprises 10 species and 3 subspecies, one newly described here. Generic characters include leaves that are simple and emarginate or bilobed; flowers with elongate hypanthia which are as long as or much longer than the sepals; pods that are glabrous, compressed, oblong, indehiscent or tardily dehiscent; and with numerous seeds, the seeds bearing an unusually long funicle extending most of the way around their circumference. A further distinctive floral character was found to be a fleshy disc on which the staminodes are mounted. An analysis carried out for this study reveals Cheniella to be characterised by a pollen type that is unique to the genus and previously unknown in the Leguminosae. Species diversity is richest in southern China, the full distribution extending westward to India and south- and eastward through Indochina into Malesia

RAINBIO : A mega-database of tropical African vascular plants distributions

The tropical vegetation of Africa is characterized by high levels of species diversity but is undergoing important shifts in response to ongoing climate change and increasing anthropogenic pressures. Although our knowledge of plant species distribution patterns in the African tropics has been improving over the years, it remains limited. Here we present RAINBIO, a unique comprehensive mega-database of georeferenced records for vascular plants in continental tropical Africa. The geographic focus of the database is the region south of the Sahel and north of Southern Africa, and the majority of data originate from tropical forest regions. RAINBIO is a compilation of 13 datasets either publicly available or personal ones. Numerous in depth data quality checks, automatic and manual via several African flora experts, were undertaken for georeferencing, standardization of taxonomic names and identification and merging of duplicated records. The resulting RAINBIO data allows exploration and extraction of distribution data for 25,356 native tropical African vascular plant species, which represents ca. 89% of all known plant species in the area of interest. Habit information is also provided for 91% of these species