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ABSTRACT
A novel species of Rhamnaceae, Colubrina zhaoguangii, is discovered in Sichuan, China, during the biodiversity investigations of the Second Tibetan Plateau Scientific Expedition and Research. Detailed descriptions and illustrations of the new species are presented herein. To date, the new species is only found in dry-warm river valleys of the Jinsha River basin in the Hengduan Mountains region (HDM). Compared with the other two known Chinese Colubrina species, C. zhaoguangii features by the habit of twisted shrub and tiny leaves with emarginate apex. In morphology, the new species highly resembles C. alluaudii endemic in Madagascar and C. viridis in northwestern Mexico, whereas it is distinguished from these two relatives by its minutely white scales on the leaf blades. The discovery of C. zhaoguangii reminds us again that the bottom region is also important for biodiversity conservation in HDM and should be a flora survey priority.
Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Mr Lang-xin Yuan (Tropical Crop Germplasm Research Institute) and Dr Yuan-yuan Li (Kunming Institute of Botany, CAS) for providing field photos of Colubrina asiatica and C. javanica, respectively. We also thank Ms Lin-Rui Wang (Yibin University) and Ms Feng Tang (Yibin University) for their assistance during the field works, Ms Li-Jia Liu (Sichuan University) for taking the microstructure, and Ms Cong-Ying Li (China National Geographic magazine) for preparing the drawing.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Correction Statement
This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.