Talk:Vavilov s.n., Kafiristan (1924)
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Discussion
Evidentiary scope
The specimen is a plant grown in 1925 at Kamennaya Step from seed Vavilov gathered in Kafiristan in 1924, not a plant collected in Afghanistan. It documents the seed sample only through the grow-out. No source read says where in Kafiristan the seed was gathered, or how the plants there were grown or used, so no classification is entered. No conservation priority is assigned.
Witnesses and identity of the sheet
Three sources describe the sheet:
- Small and Cronquist (1976, p. 429): AFGHANISTAN: Kafiristan, Vavilov 5667 (LE), among the representative specimens of var. kafiristanica.
- McPartland and Small (2020, Supplementary material 1, p. 81): Nuristān Province ("Kāfiristān"), Vavilov, 1924, reprod. by Serebriakova in 1925 at Kamennaya-Stepnaya Exp. Station, Voronezh Oblast (LE 607,5667, labeled C. sativa var. spontanea), among the intermediate forms between var. indica and var. afghanica.
- BioSample SAMEA112676497 (read 12 October 2026): herbarium LE, general collection; label heading of the All-Union Institute of Applied Botany and New Crops, Leningrad, Herzen Street 44; Reprod. Stone steppe. Voronezh province. 1925; number607; collector N.N. Vavilov, collector_number 5667; locality Afghanistan. Kafirystan. 1924; collection date not provided; source the Komarov Botanical Institute.
All three agree on the holder, the collector, the number 5667 and Kafiristan, and the second and third also agree on the 1925 grow-out in Voronezh province and the number 607. They are taken as one sheet. The BioSample's label transcription is the holder-side witness: the LE online catalogue (herbariumle.ru) lists no such sheet and GBIF publishes none. An image of the sheet showing both numbers would settle the identity.
Label reading
The sheet and its label have not been seen. The label text in the article is the BioSample's transcription and English translation. Stone steppe is a translation of the station's name, Kamennaya Step, which the 2020 supplement gives as Kamennaya-Stepnaya Experiment Station. The BioSample's N.N. Vavilov is read as N. I. Vavilov: both papers name Vavilov and the rest of the label matches their citations.
Georeferencing
No coordinate is asserted. The plant was raised from seed at Kamennaya Step, so a point in Afghanistan would place a grow-out at the place its seed came from. The label names only Kafiristan, a region now Nuristan Province, and no page exists for the 1924 seed collection itself to carry a point.
The BioSample carries a georeference, 35.8538 N 71.8054 E, made by A. P. Seregin on 2 August 2019. It lies about 1.4 km from the town of Chitral, Khyber Pakhtunkhwa, Pakistan (OpenStreetMap node 279645187, reverse-geocoded 12 October 2026), outside Nuristan Province, and it is not a label coordinate. It is not used.
Editorial treatment
Accession type. The sheet is a grow-out voucher, so the accession is a reproduction. No accession of the seed sample it came from exists, so no parent is set.
Dates. The collection date is 1924, the year Vavilov gathered the seed. The grow-out year, 1925, is the sample harvest date.
Title and numbers. 5667 is treated as the sheet's number, not a collector's field number, and the title takes s.n. with the locality. The 2020 supplement says Vavilov collected seed and did not make herbarium specimens (p. 21), and it cites this sheet in the same two-number form as the Vavilov Institute's sheets (LE 607,5667; compare WIR 609, 3945). For the type of var. kafiristanica Small and Cronquist name the seed and the sheet separately (# 3952, from seeds sown in 1927 of Vavilov 599). The BioSample's collector_number 5667 and Small and Cronquist's Vavilov 5667 put the same number in the collector-number slot. LE 607, 5667 is stored as the catalogue number in the 2020 citation form. The article does not say what 607 numbers: the same number appears in the supplement's citation of a sheet from Asadabad (WIR 607,3954) and on this Kafiristan sheet.
Locality and province. The locality is Kafiristan, the label's place name. The province field takes Nuristan Province, the 2020 supplement's present-day attribution.
Scientific name. The field takes the species, Cannabis sativa, on which the BioSample and both papers agree. The label name and the two papers' placements, which differ, are given in the article.
Repository. The sheet carries the label of the All-Union Institute of Applied Botany and New Crops but is held at LE, the herbarium of the Komarov Botanical Institute, which the BioSample names as its source.
Source discrepancies
- Collector's initials. BioSample: N.N. Vavilov. Both papers: Vavilov.
- Name on the label. McPartland and Small (2020): labeled C. sativa var. spontanea. The BioSample transcribes no name and gives the organism as Cannabis sativa.
- Placement. Small and Cronquist (1976): var. kafiristanica. McPartland and Small (2020): intermediate between var. indica and var. afghanica.
- Country of the georeference. The label: Afghanistan. The BioSample's point: Pakistan (see Georeferencing).
Sequence data
The BioSample lists no sequencing runs. The voucher LE<RUS>:CJG0653 is the project's sample code, not an LE catalogue number.
Source citations remain in the article. Éloise 08:48, 12 October 2026 (+07)