Aquilegia x miniana (J.F.Macbr. & Payson) Cronk, hybr. & stat. nov. is the correct name for the hybrid Aquilegia flavescens S.Watson x A. formosa Fisch. ex DC. var. formosa. In 1916, Payson and Macbride, while exploring the mountains of Idaho, found populations of Aquilegia that were pink in flower colour and appeared intermediate between the yellow-flowered A. flavescens and red-flowered A. formosa. They named these plants A. flavescens var. miniana J.F.Macbr. & Payson. There has been uncertainty over whether their type collections (in GH, RM, MO, US, E, CM, CAS, NY) do indeed represent hybrids or pink-flowered morphs of A. flavescens. Using a Wells diagram, the holotype (in the Gray Herbarium of Harvard University) is shown to be intermediate, allowing its identification as a clear hybrid. However, some of the isotype material is indistinguishable from A. flavescens. The holotype matches material from British Columbia that has been determined as being of hybrid origin using molecular and morphological data. A. flavescens var. miniana J.F.Macbr. & Payson is, therefore, an available name for the hybrid, which is here raised to the status of hybrid binomial.

A full description of the collection of the dataset is given in previous publications. The morphometric data is taken from herbarium specimens and is previously generated and described by Groh et al. (2019) and Groh and Cronk (2020)

References

Ref: Groh JS, Percy DM, Björk CR, Cronk QC (2019) On the origin of orphan hybrids between Aquilegia formosa and Aquilegia flavescens. AoB Plants 11(1): ply071. 

Groh JS, Cronk QCB (2020) Mosaic hybrid zone structure in two species of columbine (Aquilegia). Botany 98 (8): 459–467 doi: 10.1139/cjb-2020-001

---

Analysis: the LDA analysis was conducted in PAST

The Wells diagram was made using Excel (Microsoft Excel for Mac, version 16.63.1)