Format: ORAL

Briggitthe Melchor-Castro1,2,3, Sandra Knapp4, Tiina Srkinen1

1 Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, 20A Inverleith Row, Edinburgh EH3 5LR, United Kingdom 2 University of Edinburgh, Old College, South Bridge, Edinburgh EH8 9YL, United Kingdom. 3 Departamento de Etnobotánica y Botánica Económica del Museo de Historia Natural de la Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, Avenida Arenales 1256, Jesús María, Lima, 15072, Perú 4 Department of Life Sciences, Natural History Museum, Cromwell Road, London SW7 5BD, United Kingdom

One third of Solanum species remain to be taxonomically revised (~250 of the total 1,200 species). The unrevised species are focused in five clades mostly Neotropical clades with highly plastic leaf morphology and indumentum that is difficult to understand without field observations, large number of specimens, and access to microscopic details. One of these clades is the Torva clade with ca. 68 species and 269 names and which includes the pea eggplant (S. torvum) used for its edible fruits. Regional accounts have helped to clarify taxonomy of the group (e.g., Costa Rica, Africa and Asia), but a set of poorly understood species complexes remain in the tropical Andes especially that have been used as a dumping ground for complex morphological variation that may represent several distinct species. This talk presents a taxonomic overview of the Torva clade in the Andes. Based on a detailed morphological study of herbarium specimens, fieldwork, and nomenclatural revision, we recognise 36 species of the Torva clade in the Andes, of which 7 species are new and 5 are newly resurrected. The clade is most diverse in Peru where 21 species are found. Reassessment of the morphological traits reveals that trichome structure on stem, leaves and flowers is key to species delimitation. Other key characters include floral bud shape, calyx lobe shape, and corolla shape. The morphological species concepts will now be tested using target capture bait sequence data.