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MORPHOLOGICAL VARIABILITY OF GENUS BLACKSTONIA
HUDSON (GENTIANACEAE) IN THE IBERIAN PENINSULA AND
BALEARIC ISLANDS
Zoila DÍAZ LIFANTE
University of Sevilla, Departmento de Biología Vegetal y Ecología, Sevilla, Spain; zoila@us.es
Genus Blackstonia Huds. is widely distributed in the Mediterranean Region, where several
infrageneric taxa have been described, all of them present in the Iberian Peninsula. As a
contribution to “Flora Iberica”, a study of the morphological variation in the genus has been
carried out using multivariate analyses. Voucher specimens were selected covering the whole
distribution area of the traditionally recognized taxa. Both vegetative and reproductive
characters have been considered, most of them quantitative, and a Principal Component
Analysis has been applied (SPSS for Windows). This study has revealed four well
differentiated groups of plants, both by vegetative characters (leaf basal rosette, shape and
connation degree of caulinar leaves) and reproductive characters (branching system of the
inflorescence, shape and connation degree of sepals, size of petals, length of style). Some of
these characters have been traditionally used in many floristic studies, but others have been
used for the first time and have proved to be very useful in the taxonomy of Blackstonia.
There is not agreement on how its morphologic variability must be treated, thus a same taxon
has been considered at specific, subspecific or varietal level by different authours. Owed to
the scarce overlapping of the variation range, and the geographic and ecological sympatric
distribution, the species level is proposed for the four main morphological entities. These are
B. perfoliata Huds., B. grandiflora (Viv.) Pau, B. acuminata (Koch & Ziz) Domin and B.
imperfoliata L. fil. Within B. perfoliata and B. acuminata some infraspecific variability has
been detected mainly in relation to the ratio between anther and stamen filament. In this study
the taxonomic status to be given to these infraspecific groups is discussed.
Keywords: morphological variation, multivariate analysis, taxonomical characters, taxonomic
status, Mediterranean region.
CYTOTAXONOMIC STUDIES WITHIN SOME NIGELLA TAXA
(RANUNCULACEAE)
Zübeyde U�URLU 1 , Ali A. DÖNMEZ 1
1 Department of Biology, Faculty of Science, Hacettepe University, 06800 Beytepe, Ankara, Turkey.
zubeydeugurlu@gmail.com; donmez@hacettepe.edu.tr
The chromosomal studies have been carried out in 18 Nigella taxa collected from Turkey,
Syria, the Turkish Republic of the Northern Cyprus and Greece. Among them, seeds of 8 taxa
belonging to 10 populations have been germinated and their chromosomes have been studied.
Chromosome numbers for some species of the genus have been determined firstly according
to the IPCN records. These are N. oxypetala, N. elata, N. nigellastrum, N. segetalis and N.
arvensis var. tauricola. One of the interesting results obtained from this study is chromosome
number and relation of the N. elata and N. damascena which are closely related species. The
first species has 7, 12 and 18 chromosomes belong to seeds of the same population. The
studies of the species which have been collected from different populations have been
underway for making a detailed accurate decision. The studies on the chromosome of the
Nigella taxa are ongoing for contribution to the evolutionary history and cytogeograpy of the
genus.
Keywords: Chromosome, Cytotaxonomy, Monograph, Nigella, taxonomy.
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