The Plant Press

From The Plant Press, Vol. 24, No. 3, July 2021.

Art by Alice Tangerini

Pseudarthria panii R.Zhang, T.S.Yi & B.Pan

The diversity of plant symbioses and the relationships plants have with insects, fungi, bacteria, and even other plants was the theme of the 18th Smithsonian Botanical Symposium held virtually in May 2021. One presentation focused on nitrogen-fixing symbiosis between legumes and rhizobia. Alice Tangerini has illustrated several nitrogen-fixing legumes. One such plate of hers remains unpublished. When Tangerini received an unidentified plant specimen from Ashley Egan (Assistant Curator 2013-2017), it was possibly a new species of Desmodium. Tangerini made the drawing from dried unmounted material and some digital images of the flowers and habit. The drawing was done in two plates and combined. One plate contained all floral dissections and habit and a second plate had the adaxial and abaxial leaf surfaces. The hooked hairs on the pedicel were important to show. In a 2018 paper, a team from Kunming Institute of Botany named this plant as a new species of Pseudarthria from Asia.