In the EMMA herbarium there is a specimen of the genus Crambe collected by L. Ceballos and F. Ortuño in 1946 on the island of La Palma (Canary Islands) during their field work for the elaboration of the Mapa Forestal de España that was published in 1966.
At that time, Luis Ceballos and Francisco Ortuño identified it as a new variety of Crambe strigosa L’Hér. that they named C. strigosa var. gigantea Ceballos & Ortuño. In 1947 they published its description in the Boletín del Instituto Forestal de Investigaciones y Experiencias nº 33 (year XVIII). On page 11 of said bulletin you can find the reasoning that prompted them to consider it a different variety and the paragraph detailing the main descriptive features (in Latin). However, they do not mention the material collected or the herbarium depository of said material.
Searches on the IPNI website reveal curious results: no results are obtained for Crambe strigosa var. gigantea, but two Crambe gigantea of different authors do appear. One of them is Crambe gigantea (Ceballos & Ortuño) Bramwell refering to the publication by David Bramwell in 1969 in number 7 of the series Cuadernos de Botánica Canaria. In his article “Notes on the distribution of some Canarian endemic species” this researcher explains that he contributes the new combination “Crambe gigantea (Ceb. & Ort.) Bramwell comb. nov.” made on the basionym of Ceballos and Ortuño. He even reproduces the descriptive paragraph of the first authors. This publication also does not mention any reference material sent to any herbarium.
However, through the GBIF portal it can be seen that there is a specimen cataloged as Crambe gigantea (Ceballos & Ortuño) Bramwell isotype in the SEV herbarium of the University of Seville, collected by D. Bramwell in 1969 (this date coincides with the field expeditions referred to in the aforementioned article). Information can be found at this link.
On the basis of all these data, the specimen EMMA-17389, collected in 1946 by Ceballos and Ortuño in La Palma, was considered a type specimen of the Crambe strigosa var. gigantea Ceballos & Ortuño. Therefore, it was included among the sheets digitized by the SANT herbarium in 2012 to offer accessible images: Crambe strigosa var. gigantea Ceballos & Ortuño en JSTOR.
The current treatment of this taxon according to the WFO Plant List continues to be Crambe gigantea (Ceballos & Ortuño) Bramwell. In other words, when Ceballos and Ortuño considered that the observed differences were not only due to the phenology of the specimens they saw, they displayed and admirable sense. As they explain in the prologue to the publication, they were immersed in the elaboration of the Mapa Forestal, they did not expect to find this type of finding and, nevertheless, they came across them:
“Teniendo en cuenta la abundancia de viajes, herborizaciones y reseñas botánicas que por españoles y extranjeros se han dedicado a aquellas islas, atraídos por el indudable interés que siempre tuvo la flora macaronésica, no pretendíamos que nuestros actuales recorridos pudieran aportar en el aspecto florístico ninguna novedad ni dato de importancia. Por ello, ha sido grande nuestra sorpresa al comprobar que las observaciones que hemos realizado en el campo y el estudio de las muestras recogidas, nos proporcionan no pocas noticias de interés florístico o fitogeográfico, e incluso algunas novedades sistemáticas, que juzgamos oportuno dar a conocer en estas páginas, con independencia del trabajo de conjunto y sin más pretensión que la de ofrecer una modesta aportación de los Ingenieros de Montes al mejor conocimiento de la interesantísima flora canaria“
