Revision of Passiflora Subgenus Decaloba ... - Passion Flowers

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regalis in his unpublished Flora of Jamaica in 1850. However, shortly afterwards,
Grisebach (1860) and Ramírez Goyena (1909) incorrectly applied the name P.
regalis to another similar but distinct taxon, P. lancifolia. Fawcett and Rendle, in
1926, did attempt to rectify this situation and published a description of
Macfadyen's true P. regalis, which they attributed to him. However, P. regalis
Macf. ex Fawc. & Rend. is an illegitimate name because it is a later homonym of
P. regalis Macf. ex Griseb and P. regalis Macf. ex Goyena. Therefore, Adams
gave Macfadyen’s true P. regalis a new name, P. macfadyenii, and designated a
new type specimen.
As mentioned under P. lancifolia, P. macfadyenii is somewhat similar to that
taxon but differs from it in characters of the leaf, flower, and fruit. Both species
are quite distinct and can be easily separated in the field and herbarium. It is
interesting that the leaf shape of P. macfadyenii is very similar to that of P. juliana
and P. viridiflora. Killip (1938), under his description of P. lancifolia, also noticed
their vegetative similarities.
Passiflora macfadyenii is very restricted in its distribution and has only been
collected in the vicinity of Lucky Valley in the dry tropical forests of the Port Royal
Mountains, St. Andrew, Jamaica. I visited this area in June of 2000, but the
region was experiencing a severe drought and 4 days of searching for the plant
revealed neither vegetative nor reproductive material. Elma Kay (St. Louis
University and Missouri Botanical Garden) and George Proctor (University of the
West Indies and the Institute of Jamaica) have also made several trips to the
area and have not been able to find P. macfadyenii. It was last collected in 1979