''Berberis setosa'' is a shrub in the

Berberidaceae The Berberidaceae are a family of 18 genera of flowering plants commonly called the barberry family. This family is in the order Ranunculales. The family contains about 700 known species, of which the majority are in ''Berberis''. The species i ...

described as a species in 1908. It is

endemic Endemism is the state of a species being found in a single defined geographic location, such as an island, state, nation, country or other defined zone; organisms that are indigenous to a place are not endemic to it if they are also found elsew ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

, known from the provinces of

Sichuan Sichuan (; zh, c=, labels=no, ; zh, p=Sìchuān; alternatively romanized as Szechuan or Szechwan; formerly also referred to as "West China" or "Western China" by Protestant missions) is a province in Southwest China occupying most of the ...

and

Yunnan Yunnan , () is a landlocked Provinces of China, province in Southwest China, the southwest of the People's Republic of China. The province spans approximately and has a population of 48.3 million (as of 2018). The capital of the province is ...

Taxonomy

''Berberis setosa'' was initially scientifically described and named ''Mahonia setosa'' by

François Gagnepain François Gagnepain (23 September 1866 – 25 January 1952) was a French botanist. The standard botanical author abbreviation Gagnep. is applied to plants described by Gagnepain. With Achille Eugène Finet, he named a number of species with ...

. A paper published by

Joseph Edward Laferrière Joseph Edward Laferrière (born 1955) is an American botanist with a particular interest in ethnobotany. He obtained his Ph.D. from the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at the University of Arizona in 1991 with a dissertation titled ...

in 1997 summarized the arguments for ''

Mahonia ''Mahonia'' is a genus of approximately 70 species of evergreen shrubs and, rarely, small trees in the family Berberidaceae, native to eastern Asia, the Himalaya, North and Central America. They are closely related to the genus ''Berberis'' and ...

'' being more properly classified as a

synonym A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means exactly or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are all ...

of ''

Berberis ''Berberis'' (), commonly known as barberry, is a large genus of deciduous and evergreen shrubs from tall, found throughout Temperateness, temperate and subtropical regions of the world (apart from Australia). Species diversity is greatest in S ...

'' renaming it ''Berberis setosa''. As of 2023 this is the most common classification by botanists.

References

setosa Plants described in 1908 Endemic flora of China Taxa named by François Gagnepain {{Ranunculales-stub