''Ponerorchis yueana'' (

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 ...

''Amitostigma yueanum'') is a species of plant in the family Orchidaceae. It is endemic to

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 only from Sichuan and Yunnan.China Plant Specialist Group. 2004
''Amitostigma yuanum''.
The IUCN Red List of Threatened Species 2004. Downloaded on 10 September 2015. It produces pink or white flowers.Flora of China v 25 p 130, ''Amitostigma yuanum''
/ref> The epithet is also spelt "''yuana''".

Taxonomy

, there are discrepancies in the spelling of the specific epithet. The World Checklist of Selected Plant Families and the International Plant Names Index spell it "''yueanum''", noting that the original description used the form "''yüanum''". The Flora of China and the authors who moved it to the genus ''

Ponerorchis ''Ponerorchis'' is a genus of Asian terrestrial tuberous orchids (family Orchidaceae). It is native to temperate Eurasia, from Poland to Japan, to the north of the Indian subcontinent and to northern Indochina. They can be found in evergreen for ...

'' spell it "''yuanum''". Other sources are divided between these two spellings. The species was first described in 1912 by Tsin Tang and Fa Tsuan Wang, as ''Amitostigma yueanum''. A

molecular phylogenetic Molecular phylogenetics () is the branch of phylogeny that analyzes genetic, hereditary molecular differences, predominantly in DNA sequences, to gain information on an organism's evolutionary relationships. From these analyses, it is possible to ...

study in 2014, in which this species was included, found that species of ''Amitostigma'', ''Neottianthe'' and ''

'' were mixed together in a single

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...

, making none of the three genera

monophyletic In cladistics for a group of organisms, monophyly is the condition of being a clade—that is, a group of taxa composed only of a common ancestor (or more precisely an ancestral population) and all of its lineal descendants. Monophyletic gro ...

as then

circumscribed In geometry, the circumscribed circle or circumcircle of a polygon is a circle that passes through all the vertices of the polygon. The center of this circle is called the circumcenter and its radius is called the circumradius. Not every polyg ...

. ''Amitostigma'' and ''Neottianthe'' were subsumed into ''Ponerorchis'', with this species becoming ''Ponerorchis yueana''.

References

yueana Endemic orchids of China Endangered plants Orchids of Yunnan Plants described in 1940 {{Orchidoideae-stub