Discovering Karima (Euphorbiaceae), a New Crotonoid Genus from West Tropical Africa Long Hidden within Croton.

Discovering Karima (Euphorbiaceae), a New Crotonoid Genus from West Tropical Africa Long Hidden within Croton.

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Croton scarciesii (Euphorbiaceae-Crotonoideae), a rheophytic shrub from West Wooden Stacking Africa, is shown to have been misplaced in Croton for 120 years, having none of the diagnostic characters of that genus, but rather a set of characters present in no known genus of the family.Pollen analysis shows that the new genus Karima belongs to the inaperturate crotonoid group.Analysis of a concatenated molecular dataset combining trnL-F and rbcL sequences positioned Karima as sister to Neoholstia from south eastern tropical Africa in a well-supported clade comprised of genera of subtribes Grosserineae and Neoboutonieae of the inaperturate crotonoid genera.Several T-Shirt morphological characters support the relationship of Karima with Neoholstia, yet separation is merited by numerous characters usually associated with generic rank in Euphorbiaceae.Quantitative ecological data and a conservation assessment supplement illustrations and descriptions of the taxon.