been the subject of some nomenclatural instability. In 1984, Wessel Marais separated it from Gastonia cutispongia as Gastonia mauritiana. In 2003, it was shown that the correct name for this species was Gastonia elegans because it had first been described in 1866 as Terminalia elegans. This description was a large and unexpected taxonomic error because Terminalia is in the Myrtalean family Combretaceae. In 2010, when this species was transferred to Polyscias, the specific epithet had to be changed again because the names Polyscias mauritiana and Polyscias elegans already existed. The latter two are in the Polyscias subgenera Grotefendia and Tieghemopanax, respectively. The most widespread and variable of the species in the former Gastonia is Polyscias serratifolia. It ranges thru most of Malesia and from there to the Solomon Islands. Some of its varieties have been named as separate species and placed in other genera, such as Arthrophyllum and Tetraplasandra. These were united into one species by Philipson, as Gastonia papuana in 1970, and as Gastonia serratifolia in 1979. History Quattrocchi states that Gastonia was "named after Gaston d'Orléans, 1608-1660, a patron and promoter of botany and floriculture". The name was originated by Philibert Commerson, but validated later, in 1788, by Jean-Baptiste Lamarck in Encyclopédie Méthodique. Lamarck gave a detailed description of the species that he named Gastonia cutispongia. He named another species, but gave it only a cursory description. No one today is really sure of what the other species was. Some authors believe that it was not even a member of Araliaceae. Other species were added to Gastonia in the 19th century. In 1898, Hermann Harms transferred what is now Polyscias sechellarum to Gastonia in a landmark monograph on Araliaceae in Die Natürlichen Pflanzenfamilien. William Raymond Philipson gave Gastonia its modern definition in 1970. He included Malesian species that had been in Tetraplasandra, thus restricting that genus to the Hawaiian Islands. He also reduced the monotypic genera Indokingia (Polyscias crassa) and Peekeliopanax (Polyscias spectabilis) into synonymy under Gastonia. William Botting Hemsley had named Indokingia in 1906 in Hooker's Icones Plantarum.William B. Hemsley. 1909. Hooker's Icones Plantarum volume 29 (volume IX of series 4), tabula (plate) 2805 and following text. (See External links below). Peekeliopanax was a name that Hermann Harms had applied to a flowering specimen in 1926. A few years later, he placed a fruiting specimen of the same species under Gastonia. In 2003, a checklist and nomenclator