On the taxonomic subdivision of the Brown Olive from Africa and Asia through the reinstatement of Olea europaea subsp. africana (Mill.) P.S. Green

ABSTRACT

The classification of the Olive tree complex (Olea europaea L.) underwent numerous taxonomic changes before a consensus was seemingly reached two decades ago through the combination of morphological, chemical, cytological and molecular evidence that supported the identification of six subspecies in the Old World. While several authors claimed that Brown Olive populations from Africa and Asia were differentiated, there was no attempt to recognize two taxa due to the difficulty to distinguish them based on phenotypic characters and the possibility of a large secondary contact zone between differentiated taxa in NE Africa and the SW Arabian Peninsula. All genetic and phylogenomic studies, however, sufficiently distinguished the Asian Brown Olive, recognized here as Olea europaea L. subsp. cuspidata (Wall. ex G. Don) Cif. from the African Brown Olive, which is here reinstated as Olea europaea L. subsp. africana (Mill.) P.S. Green.

KEYWORDS:

• Africa
• Asia
• olive complex
• synonymy
• taxonomy
• nomenclature

Acknowledgments

We thank V. Depierre and R. Ward (CBN Bailleul) for providing a bibliographic reference and L. Civeyrel for discussions on rules in plant taxonomy. We dedicate this article to Pierre Villemur, who shared with some of us his passion for the olive tree.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Author contributions

G.B. wrote the paper with the help of and contributions from C.H.-W. and F.M.

Correction Statement

This article has been corrected with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Funding

G.B. is supported by the H2020 project Gen4Olive (H2020-SFS-2020-1; G.A. No. 101000427) and by LabEx TULIP (ANR-10-LABX-0041) and CEBA (ANR-10-LABX-25-01) both managed by the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche.