Christoph Oberprieler The Systematics of Anthemis L. - Herbmedit.org

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Oberprieler: Anthemis in N Africa
dorso-ventralIy compressed and indistinc1y ribbed achenes, while leaving the species with
terete achenes and IO distinct ribs in Anthemis. He also inc1uded A. fuseata and A. eotula
in Anthemis, while noting their similarity with A. mixta which he left in Ormenis.
Problems relating to the correct demarcation of Ormenis against Anthemis owe their
solution to Schultz's revised taxonomy of the Anthemideae (in Schnitzlein 1854: 69-70;
Schultz 1860). Schultz proposed a subdivision of the tribe into six subtribes, mainly on
carpological grounds, with members of Anthemis assigned to Cotinae and Anthemidinae
and members of Ormenis (O. fuseata, O. mixta, O. nobilis), along with the unispecific
Cladanthus forming subtribe Ormenidae.
Bentham & Hooker (1873) and Hoffmann (1891-1892) reacted to the excessive splitting
of Anthemis by more or less re-establishing the Linnean circumscription of the genus,
in which they merged such rather unrelated genera as Ormenis, Lepidophorum, or the N
African Rhetinolepis described by Cosson (1856), while keeping separate other segregates
of Anthemis, e.g. Ammanthus (described in Boissier 1849) and Hiorthia (containing the
poorly understood Anaeyclus orientalis L.). By that time, however, Boissier (1875) had
already worked out a taxonomy of Anthemis that corresponds almost completely with our
present circumscription and supraspecific taxonomy of the genus. Only Ammanthus was
stilI to face a long period of generic independence, or rnisplacement in Chrysanthemum,
until Greuter (1968) proposed its inc1usion in Anthemis, thus completing OUT present notion
of the genus.
4. Generic relationships
Anthemis provides the type of the name Anthemideae, used by Cassini (Ì819: 192) to
designate his eleventh tribe of Compositae. Cassini (1823) divided the tribe into two major
groups: "Anthérnidées-Chrysanthémées" and "Anthémidées-Prototypes", based on the
absence vs. presence of paleso These two subtribes, later-on validly named Chrysantheminae
Less. and Anthemidinae Dumort., were used by most systematists concerned with the
infratribal taxonomy in the folIowing decades (e.g. Candolle 1838, Boissier 1875, Hoffmann
1891-1892, Hegi 1928). The artificiality of this subdivision c1early stated by Merxmiiller
(1954) and Wagenitz (1964) and demonstrated by Greuter (1968) when he found
that in Ammanthus, up till then c1assified with Chrysantheminae, the presence or absence
of scales "does not even necessarily suffice to distinguish species", which led him to trans~
fer its species to Anthemis. Hybridisation experiments among members of Anthemideae
made by Mitsuoka & Ehrendorfer (1972) have shown that the inheritance of pales is
probably under simple oligogenic control. Further evidence carne from the ambiguous
position of the unispecific genus Lepidophorum, usualIy placed in the vicinity of Anthemis
due to the presence of pales, but in morphological, phytochernical (Bohlmann & al. 1973,
Harborne & al. 1976), and embryological features (Harling 1960) c10sely resembling palelacking
members of the tribe. Observations of sporadic paleate capitula in Chrysanthemum
(Napp-Zinn & Eble 1978) and inc1usion of paleate and epaleate species into Athanasia by
KiilIersj6 (1991) point in the same direction.
Owing to the artificiality of a c1assification based on the presence vs. absence of pales,
numerous attempts have been made in the last forty years to elaborate a more satisfactory