I’m thinking of my aunt Audrey again today. In my previous post, I talked about a succulent named for both her and my uncle Bob, Kalanchoe fadeniorum.
But she also has a plant named by Bob just for her, another one they discovered together: Murdannia audreyae. You can see a couple photos of it on iNaturalist (Archive).
Murdannia are part of the Commelinaceae family, dayflowers, one specialty of my uncle. I remember him pointing out the Asiatic dayflowers growing in our yard in Iowa.
One neat thing is that in Bob’s paper introducing the plant (and some others) (archived here?), one of the illustrations is from Audrey herself:
The section on Murdannia audreyae ends with the following:
This species is named in honor of my wife, Audrey Joy Faden, who first spotted the plant during our fieldwork in Sri Lanka in 1976 and 1977. The predominantly violet flowers of the new species make it stand out from all other Murdannia species in Sri Lanka.
And it begins with the following, including the approximate latitude and longitude:
Murdannia audreyae Faden, sp. nov. TYPE: Sri Lanka. Northern Province, Jaffna: Jaffna-Poo-neryn ferry road, mile post 7/4, Arukuveli, ca. 9°37’N, 80°10’E, just above sea level, 22 Jan. 1977, R. B. & A. J. Faden 77/204 (holotype,US 2890994; isotypes, AAU, C, E, F, K, L, MO, NSW, P, PDA, TI, US). Figure 2.
So, we can take a look at the place in Sri Lanka on the map:
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