An international team of botanists has described a new subgenus of plants and named it after the notable American ornithologist James Bond.
Left: Alternanthera costaricensis. Right: Alternanthera sp. Image credit: I. Sánchez-del Pino & D. Iamonico.
Jamesbondia is an infrageneric group of the Neotropical flowering genus known as Alternanthera, according to Dr. Duilio Iamonico from the University of Rome Sapienza, Italy, and Dr. Ivonne Sánchez-del Pino from the Centro de Investigación Científica de Yucatán, Mexico.
The scientists named it after the ornithologist James Bond, whose name Ian Fleming — a keen bird watcher — is known to have used for his eponymous spy series.
The four Jamesbondia plant species — Alternanthera costaricensis, A. geniculata, A. olivacea, and A. serpyllifolia — are mostly found in Central America and the Caribbean Islands.
Dr. Iamonico and Dr. Sánchez-del Pino have built on the research of Dr. J.M. Mears, who identified a group of Caribbean plant species as ‘Jamesbondia’ from 1980 to 1982 in unpublished annotations on Alternanthera specimens.
Molecular phylogenetic analyses and observations of the flower morphology justify the official separate naming of this group.
The name Jamesbondia has never previously been validly published. Respecting the annotations of Dr. Mears, the authors named the subgenus in honor of the American ornithologist.
“Jamesbondia is clearly dedicated to the ornithologist James Bond (1900–1989), who focused his research on birds in the same Caribbean areas that are the primary home of the four putative species of subgenus,” they said.
Research describing the new subgenus is published in the April 2016 issue of the Plant Biosystems, An International Journal Dealing with all Aspects of Plant Biology (Official Journal of the Societa Botanica Italiana).
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I. Sánchez-del Pino & D. Iamonico. 2016. Jamesbondia, a new subgenus of Alternanthera (Gomphrenoideae, Amaranthaceae) from Central America and the Caribbean Islands. Plant Biosystems, vol. 150, no. 2; doi: 10.1080/11263504.2014.941034
