New species of Lysionotus with unusual flowers reported from Yunnan, China

Lysionotus encompasses more than 30 species distributed from Himalaya to southern China, Indo-China and southern Japan. About half of the total 18 species are known from Yunnan, China.

During a botanical field survey of southwestern Yunnan in August 2019, researchers from Kunming Institute of Botany (KIB) of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) found an unknown Lysionotus species with unusual flowers living on trees in secondary forest of Cangyuan County. In the following year, another population of the species was found nearby in the same county by researchers from Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden (XTBG) of CAS.

Researchers carried out careful morphological studies, comparing it with other species of the genus, consulting literature and herbarium specimens of Lysionotus. They confirmed that their materials represented a new species and named it as Lysionotus cangyuanensis to refer to the type locality in Cangyuan County.

The new species is published in Taiwania.

Lysionotus cangyuanensis is an epiphytic subshrub. It resembles Lysionotus sulphureoides and L. coccinus morphologically and ecologically. But the species can be distinguished from others by its leaf blade size, bracts shape, corolla size and throat markings, and anthers shape.

Its leaf blade is up to 13 cm long; bracts are elliptical to oblong. Its corolla is 3.5–4 cm long, with 15 purple longitudinal lines in throat and one purple patch at each junction of the upper and lower lips. The anthers are cordate.

The new species flowers from August to September.

Currently, only two populations were found in the secondary forest of Cangyuan County. One population was found with less than five individuals growing on a tree of Alnus nepalensis at an elevation of 1,802 m above sea level, and the other was found with less than 10 individuals growing on two big trees about 50 m apart from each other at an elevation of about 2,000 m above sea level.

“According to the IUCN Red List Categories and Criteria (IUCN, 2022), the new species should be assessed as ‘Data Deficient’ (DD),” said Shen Jianyong of XTBG, one of the corresponding authors of the study.