''Saintpauliopsis'' is a

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

genus of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

s belonging to the family

Acanthaceae Acanthaceae is a family (the acanthus family) of dicotyledonous flowering plants containing almost 250 genera and about 2500 species. Most are tropical herbs, shrubs, or twining vines; some are epiphytes. Only a few species are distributed in te ...

. It only contains one known species, ''Saintpauliopsis lebrunii'' Staner It is native to Burundi, Gabon, Madagascar, Rwanda, Tanzania and Zaïre. ''Saintpauliopsis'' was originally classified in the family

Gesneriaceae Gesneriaceae, the gesneriad family, is a family of flowering plants consisting of about 152 genera and ca. 3,540 species in the tropics and subtropics of the Old World (almost all Didymocarpoideae) and the New World (most Gesnerioideae), with ...

and the genus name, meaning "similar to '' Saintpaulia''" (now synonymized under ''

Streptocarpus ''Streptocarpus'' ("twisted fruit" from Greek στρεπτός (''streptos'') "twisted" and καρπός (''carpos'') "fruit") is an Afrotropical genus of flowering plants in the family Gesneriaceae. The genus is native to Afromontane biotopes ...

''), indirectly honors Walter Le Tanneux de Saint Paul-Illaire (1860–1940), a German imperial precinct captain in

German East Africa German East Africa (GEA; german: Deutsch-Ostafrika) was a German colony in the African Great Lakes region, which included present-day Burundi, Rwanda, the Tanzania mainland, and the Kionga Triangle, a small region later incorporated into Mozam ...

(roughly present-day Tanzania), and his father, Ulrich Maximilian von Saint Paul-Illaire (1833–1902), a German naval officer and court official. The Latin

specific epithet In taxonomy, binomial nomenclature ("two-term naming system"), also called nomenclature ("two-name naming system") or binary nomenclature, is a formal system of naming species of living things by giving each a name composed of two parts, bot ...

of ''lebrunii'' refers to Belgian botanist Lebrun, Jean Paul Antoine (1906-1985). It was first described and published in Bull. Jard. Bot. État Bruxelles Vol.13 on page 8 in 1934.

References

{{Taxonbar, from1=Q9072709, from2=Q15357975 Acanthaceae Acanthaceae genera Plants described in 1934 Flora of Madagascar Flora of West-Central Tropical Africa Flora of Tanzania