Contribution à la connaissance des Primulaceae (ex Myrsinaceae) de Nouvelle-Calédonie. II. Le genre Rapanea Aubl.

The New Caledonian flora is exceptionally rich in species linked to the genus Rapanea, the study of which having not been undertaken since the works of Mez published more than one century ago, and based on the examination of a small number of collections mainly made at low altitude when the speciation seems to have been very active in mountainous areas, often not easy to access. The abundant material preserved today in Paris, thanks to the specimens collected in the course of the last 60 years by the botanists of the Museum (Guillaumin and above all H. S. MacKee), of the IRD (formerly ORSTOM), from the Research Center of Nouméa, or coming from foreign countries, mainly from Switzerland (Baumann, Hürlimann, Bernardi) and from USA (Lowry, McPherson), justified a new examination of the group. This examination however has proven to be rather delicate, the distinction between the different species, within a genus with sharp boundaries, appearing sometimes uncertain, their taxonomic features turning out to be enough fluctuating, at least in the case of numerous available specimens. So, the study below has to be considered as a temporary focusing. It is about 39 species, several of them including one or a few varieties. We have retained 11 of the 14 species mentioned by Guillaumin in his Flore analytique et synoptique de la Nouvelle-Calédonie, come out in 1948, all of them, except two, described by Mez. The other ones are introduced as new. But, following the surveys in the field actually going on, subsequent works are expecting to partly modify the proposed classification