The Lauraceous collections of Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius in the Flora Brasiliensis

Abstract. This study refers to specimens of Lauraceae collected in Brazil by Carl Friedrich Philipp von Martius between 1817 and 1820. He collected 57 currently accepted species of Lauraceae, which belong to nine genera: Aniba, Cassytha, Cinnamomum, Cryptocarya, Dicypellium, Licaria, Nectandra, Ocotea, and Persea, for which Martius is known to have made about 99 different collections. The vast majority of them are nomenclatural types and, taking into account the synonyms involved, encompassing 26 holotypes, 23 lectotypes, and 30 syntypes. Besides Martius himself, early descriptions and citations of these materials were made by Nees von Esenbeck, Meissner, and Mez, the first monographers of the family. Martius’s collections were the basis for the Flora Brasiliensis, where the taxonomic treatment of Lauraceae was made by the Swiss botanist Carl Daniel Friedrich Meissner in 1866, being of particular interest for indicating all the collections examined and available at that time. Here, we provide an annotated and updated list of 60 entries with information on the status of the names and their types, currently accepted names, collections found in different herbaria, accompanied by an Index to Scientific names and an Index to Collections. Although there are no cases of specimens of Lauraceae collected by Martius from his “Martii Herbarium Florae Brasiliensis,” they are also listed here since they have been attributed to him in literature. Lectotypes for two names, Cryptocarya speciosa, and Nectandra nitidula var. maior, are designated, and a new synonymy is proposed.