Recent results have demonstrated that the genus Desmanthus is non-monophyletic because the genus Kanaloa is nested within it, with a single species, Desmanthusbalsensis placed as sister to the clade comprising Kanaloa plus the remaining species of Desmanthus. Here we transfer D.balsensis to a new segregate genus Mezcala, discuss the morphological features supporting this new genus, present a key to distinguish Mezcala from closely related genera in the Leucaena subclade, and provide a distribution map of M.balsensis.
Keywords: Desmanthus; Fabaceae; Kanaloa; generic delimitation; monophyly; taxonomy.
Colin E. Hughes, Jens J. Ringelberg, Melissa Luckow, José Luis Contreras Jiménez.