Correcting taxonomic misidentifications is crucial to ensuring the conservation and use of wild relatives in crop breeding programmes. Macrotyloma sar-garhwalensis R.D.Gaur & L.R.Dangwal, described as a new species from Uttarakhand (India) in 1997, is one such case of mistaken identity. Critical study of its protologue, type specimen, and field-grown plants indicated that this species was conspecific to Clitoria annua J.Graham. Molecular systematic studies using ITS 2 sequence regions further confirmed its closeness to C. ternatea L., than to any of the studied Macrotyloma species. This taxon, when considered as a wild relative of horsegram ( M. uniflorum (Lam.) Verdc.), was given much importance in plant genetic resources programmes. This communication, besides revealing the differences of the taxon in question from Macrotyloma , brings out implications of this wrong taxonomic placement (under Macrotyloma ). It also highlights the need for depositing type specimen in national repositories for ready access and strengthening the taxonomic base of botanists in general and agricultural scientists in particular.