Cactaceae type specimens at BA. Argentinian Natural Sciences Museum Herbarium, Buenos Aires, Argentina

the Herbarium from Argentinian natural Sciences Museum “Bernardino rivadavia” (BA Herbarium) was the first official herbarium in this country. It was initiated in 1853 and holds about 150.000 herbarium specimens at present, most of them collected all over Argentina, but also obtained by exchange with other national and international botanical institutions. About 100.000 correspond to vascular plants, and 800 represent nomenclatural type specimens. cactaceae type material deposited at BA is presented. this article includes a list of the 60 type specimens alphabetically arranged; scientific names with taxon authors, original publication data and type category are transcribed from the original labels. current accepted scientific names are also included. under observations, ecological information or additional comments written by the author of the description are given. under notes some consideration of our own, most regarding to the current synonymy, are given. these type specimens are kept in special metal cabinets, separated from the rest of the herbarium material and documented with a copy of the original diagnosis or publication. As part of the digitalization of Biological collections Project carried out by the museum, the complete information of each specimen was digitalized and is available online through the web site of the Sistema nacional de datos Biológicos (SndB) and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF).

representing the main flora of the Argentinian phytogeographical provinces and covering all the vegetated areas of the country, but also collected abroad and obtained by exchange with many national and international botanical institutions. of all specimen, about 101.500 belong to Vascular Plants, 50.000 to cellular Plants and 800 represent nomenclatural published type specimens.
Lucien Leon Hauman-Merck (1880-1965) and carlos Luis Spegazzini (1858Spegazzini ( -1926) ) were two of its first botanists researchers, devoted to Argentinian Flora, describing and naming a great number of genera and species.Hauman is author of one of the first and most extensive local catalogues (Hauman, 1917), and collected a number of antique specimen deposited at BA not only from Argentina but also from France.Spegazzini was undoubtedly an enthusiastic plant devoted, considering the large number of publications, extensive works on regional floras and several opuscules, many of them dedicated exclusively to cacti species distributed in Argentina.He had such a predilection for flowering plants in general and the cactaceae family particularly that he established a great personal herbarium of vascular plants (LPS; Holmgren et al., 1990) constituted by an unknown number of specimens and ca.700 type specimens, transferred to Museo de La Plata Herbarium (LP) in 1966 (Katinas et al., 2004).Many Spegazzini's specimens are currently found in BA, BAF, BAB, and cord in Argentina and in Europe and the united States herbarium.His type collection is rather incomplete since most of the Spegazzini's type sheets are missing (torres at al. 2006;Katinas et al., 2000).castellanos and Lelong (1940) refer that the types of the majority of Spegazzini's cacti species were not preserved because they were represented by living specimens, cultivated at home, without labels on the plant itself and he generally made his notes on the spot from the plant.the living specimens cultivated in Spegazzini's residence represent approximately 125 different species (Spegazzini, 1900).Shortly before his death in 1926, Spegazzini donated his collection of live cacti to the Zoological of La Plata.Later, the director of the Zoo at that time, carlos Marelli, donated some "types" and other of these living specimens to the Argentinian natural Sciences Museum of Buenos Aires (herbarium BA) (Katinas et al., 2004;castellanos y Lelong, 1940).It is also well documented in some photographs and on the collection entrance books.
Alberto c. castellanos was born in córdoba  (castellanos, 1925).He worked with almost every vascular plant family, but left and invaluable legacy on regard to an understanding and knowledge of the cacti and bromeliace, being considered a worldwide authority.In 1925, he started working at this Museum as an assistant of Ing.Lucien L. Hauman-Merck, at that time in charge of the Herbarium.the museum was annexed to natural Sciences Faculty from Buenos Aires university by then.this fact allowed him to serve as both botanist researcher and enthusiastic university teacher.As a teacher he contributed to the education of botanists in several fields beyond phanerogames study: first cryptogamists, geobotanists and paleobotanists in our country were his disciples (Guarrera, 1972).
His first collection campaigns took place all over Argentina in company of Hauman (Singer, 1969), and were aimed to document the national flora.Subsequently, between 1947 and 1976, in collaboration with roberto capurro and/or ofelia castagnino, it was published in several volumes the first Catálogo de Plantas Vasculares de la Argentina.thus, his collection specimens started to constitute the main core of the Herbarium.castellanos prompted the adoption of a systematically organized herbarium (castellanos, 1936) following the classification system proposed by Engler regarding to botanic orders and Families and unchanged in following editions (Engler, 1964), and arranging genera within families following de dalla torre criteria (dalla torre & Harms, 1907), criterium also adopted by most herbaria in the world.While in charge of the Herbarium, as Head of the Botany department from Argentinian natural Sciences Museum, the Herbarium obtained the BA acronym according to the International Association of Plant taxonomists (IAPt), association which he was co-founder.He occupied the Head of Botany department position until 1948, when became honorary researcher.then he collaborate and directed the branch of Instituto Miguel Lillo in Buenos Aires city.there, he organized the botanical collections, descriptions and illustrations published in the Genera et Species Plantarum Argentinarum (1945Argentinarum ( -1955)), leaded by Horacio descole, first global flora from our country.
In 1957, he established in rio de Janeiro where organized the Museo do Rio de Janeiro Herbarium, referred as Herbário Alberto Castellanos (GuA) which belongs to Instituto Estadual Do Ambiente (InEA), institution responsible for the edition of the scientific Journal "Albertoa".He also teached and contributed with the Jardim Botânico do rio de Janeiro, city where he finally deceased on the September 5 th , 1968.
All over his vast and prolific career, he accounts for more than 26.000 plant specimens collected and more than 100 publications authored, a few of them in collaboration with his wife, Herminia Lelong.He worked at Universidad de Buenos Aires, Universidad Nacional de Tucumán, Universidad de Montevideo and Museo Nacional do Rio de Janeiro.In Brazil, he was awarded with the Orden Nacional do Cruzeiro do Sul and Medalla al Mérito D. Joao VI.
Among his legacy at BA herbarium, there is a vast cactus collection, initiated and developed on his own, almost unique in the remarkable feature of being preserved partially in special conservation liquid.the collection counts with 1.571 specimens, more than a half collected by castellanos (857 specimens: 54, 6%), some other donated by colleagues or obtained by exchange.Among them all, 60 represent type specimens (3, 8%), most of them from Argentina (52: 88,1%), where castellanos collected 20 type specimens (33,3 %).there is one specimen from Brasil and another one from uruguay.From Argentina, córdoba is the province with more type specimens deposited (11 specimens: 18,3%) followed by La rioja (8 specimens: 13,3%), San Luis and catamarca (6 specimens each: 10%).
castellano's way of work follows this protocole: after field collection, vegetative parts of cactaceas were brought to the Museum (by then located at the old Alsina street building), and cultivated in the yard or at greenhouse.Part of the material corresponding either to vegetative or reproductive stages was then fixed, allowing the collection to account for specimen vegetative parts, flower, fruit and seeds, while preserving the original size and shape (castellanos, 1940).Fixation utilized formalin (formaldehyde 40%) then diluted once more at 40% in distilled water.the rest of the material was traditionally compressed and dried.
the present article is part of a series of taxonomic articles that included 30 BA type specimens belonging to Potamogetonaceae, Alismataceae, cyperaceae, Xyridaceae, Erocaulaceae (López, 1988) and 112 to Poaceae family (Arriaga et al., 2001).Here we present a list of the 60 cactaceae type specimens arranged by the taxon name with author, followed by the publication data (bibliographic citation), classification of type (holotypus, isotypus, paratypus, topotypus, neotypus or lectotypus, typus formae, isotypus varietatis, typus), and all the specimen information included in the original handwritten label.In cases of synonymy, currently accepted names are updated, accompanied by the proper reference to the author and date of the publication that supports the shift.under observations, ecological information or additional comments written by the author of the description are given.under notes, some consideration of our own, most regarding the current synonymy, are given.
In agreement with current development of museum-based informatics and its applications in biodiversity analysis (Graham et al., 2004;Edwards et al., 2000), the entire cactaceae collection was digitized, as part of the broader digitalization of Biological collections Project carried out by the MAcn. the digitizing process of the BA included a data entry of about 24.000 specimens, and the complete information of each cactus specimen has been achieved in 2008-2009.All data were incorporated to a Microsoft Acces database using Aurora, a special database manager software developed by the MAcn (rodríguez, 2007-2014), and is available online through the Sistema nacional de datos Biológicos (SndB) website (http://www.sndb.mincyt.gob.ar), and the Global Biodiversity Information Facility (GBIF) (http://www.gbif.org/).
Original names: original names of taxa appear in italics, followed by author´s standard form and literature data containing the original description.the list of names of species and infraspecific taxa belonging to cactaceae follows "the International Plant names Index" (IPnI; http://www.ipni.org/), the Flora del conosur database (IrIS, http://www2.darwin.edu.ar/Proyectos/FloraArgentina/FA.asp) and Missouri Botanical Garden database (tropicos, http://www.tropicos.org/)and all other appropriate literature, e.g.publications authored by A. castellanos where new taxa are described.
Exsiccata: Label transcription of each type specimen is given, including (in order, semicolon spaced): nomenclatural type classification (holotypus, isotypus, paratypus, topotypus, neotypus, etc.), BA number, collector's name and number (if present), collection's date (day/month/year), collection's place information: «country, province, department, area or locality», type of preservation (dried or liquid conserved specimen).the country, political province and department of collection, was added by us when the label lacked that data.When there is not a reference about the location or date of collection, it is referred as missing information.
Observations: Includes collector's or determinavit handwritten comments on the taxon or collection details.
Notes: relevant consideration of our own and consulted cacti specialist (e.g.r.Kiesling).
When more than one type specimen referring to the same scientific name exist, each of them is listed below the original name (not repeated) and publication (cited once if all of them were described in the same publication).

AcKnoWLEdGEMEntS
Many thanks are given to roberto Kiesling for critical reading of the manuscript and synonymy revision, personal notes on names, distribution and reference information.We also acknowledge Lic.cinthia Susic Martín for partial data entry.the digitizing project was supported by William Foundation, the Japan International cooperation Agency (JIcA) and conIcEt.BIBLIoGrAPHY obs.: L.nr.: 3299.Fundort: Southern end of Sa. de Sañogasta, L.r.