A. utile

[George R Stilwell, Jr.]

Roy,

I'm not really sure about A. utile.
I think it was reduced to A. verrucosum v. utile, but I'm not sure.
Here are the two citations:

A. utile Hook. f. ex Engl., Monographiae Phanerogamarum 2:537. 1860.

A. verrucosum v. utile (Hook. f. ex Schott) U.C. Pradhan, Himalayan
Cobra-Lilies (A.) p. 59. 1990. Cited in: Pradhan, Udai C., 1990.

What puzzles me is that they both originate with "Hook. f." but one is
"ex Engl."
and the other is "ex Schott".

Pradhan claims A. utile is a valid species, but lists A, verrucosum v,
utile in the same
description without distinction. And, he cites Hook.f. ex Schott as he
earliest description
for both of them. I cannot even find A. verrucosum in his key and utile
appears to be
distinguished from A. propinquum by it's spathe blade. He lists A.
verrucosum under
A. griffithii Schott along with A. griffithii v. verrucosum.
One would gather that he does not consider A. verrucosum a valid species
name. But,
Peter Boyce has been less than enthusiastic about Pradhan's book.

Chatterjee shows them as different in his key:
8. Spathe obovate, deep purple:
9. Petiole and peduncle verrucose
A. verrucosum
9. Petiole and peduncle glabrous:
10. Leaflets 3 5 cm. wide
A. sikkimense
10. Leaflets 9 13 cm. wide:
11. Spadix 15 18 cm. long
A. costatum
11. Spadix 20 30 cm. long
A. utile
Apparently they differ at the "Petiole & peduncle" level. But there is no
mention of
A. verrucosum v. utile in his paper.

Polunin & Stainton also use the spathe blade to distinguish utile from
propinquum. But
they don't mention verrucosum of any form.

Sorry about that Roy. All I've done is add to the confusion. You need an
expert like Guy
to sort this all out. I'm not sure where the reduction of A. utile shown
in the species list
came from. I suspect from Hara's paper (which I can't locate at the
moment).

Ray
<GRSJr at Juno.com>

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