Ricerc@Sapienza

Plantago Linnaeus (1753: 112) (Plantaginaceae) is a genus including 200–250 species distributed throughout the temperate
zone and the high-elevation tropical regions (Rahn 1996, Rønsted et al. 2002).
This genus is critical from the taxonomical point of view, showing a high morphological variability and plasticity
(Anderson et al. 2013), a reduced number of morphological characters (Rahn, 1996) and a phylogenetic history not completely
resolved (Rønsted et al. 2002, Ishikawa et al. 2009, Tay et al. 2010, Meudt 2011). In addition, recently new species were
discovered and described (Hassemer & Baumann 2014, Hassemer et al. 2014, Hassemer 2016, Hassemer & Rønsted, 2016),
and new combinations were proposed (Hassemer & al., 2015). Also nomenclature of the genus is problematic and several
names were recently investigated (Di Pietro et al. 2013, Di Pietro & Iamonico 2014a, 2014b, Iamonico et al. 2017).
As part of an ongoing study on the genus Plantago (Di Pietro et al. 2013, Di Pietro & Iamonico, 2014a, 2014b,
Hassemer et al. 2017, Iamonico et al. 2017), we present here a note concerning the Linnaean name Plantago latifolia, which
appears still untypified and is considered by Jarvis (2007) as a name with uncertain application.