The genus Ribes (Grossulariaceae) is widespread across the northern hemisphere, but also species-rich in the tropical Andes. In the Peruvian Andes the genus is mostly found in at least seasonally moist cloud and scrub forests, subparamo habitats and hedges. However, some taxa are from more extreme habitats in semi-arid habitats of the western slope of the Andes (Andean scrub, Ribes ovalifolium) respectively high Andean puna and paramo habitats at elevations of up to 5100 m asl (Ribes cuneifolium and some doubtful segregates). These species share small, weakly divided leaves, making them quite atypical for the genus, usually with large, deeply three- to five-lobed leaves. Both the geographical ranges and the species delimitation for both taxa are poorly understood. We here propose the recognition of only two, well-differentiated species. Ribes ovalifolium can be shown to be wide-ranging f...

The genus Ribes (Grossulariaceae) has a center of diversity in the tropical Andes, especially in Peru. Several new species have been discovered in recent years and additional collections keep turning up material of undescribed species. In the present study we describe two additional new species, both from the wide-ranging species complex around Ribes andicola. Ribes lambayequensis comes from a known centre of diversity of the Andean plants, the Amotape-Huancabamba Zone, but represents the first species of the genus from Lambayeque. It differs most obviously from its geographical neighbor Ribes colandina by its two-coloured flowers in erect inflorescences (versus uniformly dark red flowers in pendulous racemes in R. colandina). The other new species is described from Apurímac and represents the first microendemic species of Ribes from this generally poorly explored region. It is a far so...