Digitalis transiens

A specimen of Digitalis transiens collected at around 2,000 metres in altitude near Aït Mesan in the Atlas Mountains by Johannes Justus Rein and Karl Fritsch during their excursion to Morocco in the early 1870s had been misidentified as D. atlantica, and using that misidentification, in 1878 the Irish botanist John Ball then synonymised D. atlantica to D. lutea in error.^[5][6]

It took until 1940 before the French botanist René Maire described it as a new species,^[1] but it has since had a confused and turbulent taxonomic history.^[2] Karol Marhold in 2011 in the Euro+Med Plantbase, for example, does not even recognise the species, but does include two different taxa both called D. atlantica, the correct one endemic to Algeria, and the other Moroccan one without authority attribution presumably being D. transiens.^[7]

Based on Ball's 1878 description, it is distinguished from Digitalis lutea by having smaller, more abundant flowers, and the leaves in the inflorescence being somewhat bract-like.^[5]