Adil GÜNER, Vehbi ESER - optima

Oral Lectures
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SYSTEMATICAL STUDIES AND GENERIC DELIMITATION ON THE
GENUS ELYMUS L. (POACEAE) IN TURKEY.
Evren CAB� 1 , Musa DO�AN 1 , Galip AKAYDIN 2
1 Middle East Technical University, Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Department of Biological Sciences, Ankara,
TURKEY ecabi@metu.edu.tr, doganm@metu.edu.tr
2 Hacettepe University, Department of Biology Education, 06800 Ankara, TURKEY agalip@hacettepe.edu.tr
An updated synopsis of Elymus s.l. (Gramineae) in Turkey is presented on the basis of revisional
study conducted by the authors on the tribe Triticeae in Turkey between 2006-2009. Since
Linnaeus (1753) described the genus Elymus L. with original six taxa, (E. arenarius, E. sibiricus,
E. canadensis, E. virginicus, E. caput-medusae and E. sitanion), lots of transfers have been
occurred between Elymus and other closely related genera or vice versa. The last comprehensive
taxonomic treatment of Elymus in Turkey was made by Melderis (1985) who recognized 19
species in the Flora of Turkey and the East Aegean Islands volume 9 without giving any
infrageneric grouping. In our revisional study, the genus is treated in its narrow sense including
the genera Elytrigia Desv. and Roegneria K. Koch. However, Pseudoroegneria (Nevski) A. Löve
and Thinopyrum A. Löve are morphologically clearly distinct groups and should be recognized as
different genera from the Elymus s.l. on the basis of genomic concepts and morphological
characters. As the arguments for recognizing the Roegneria and Elytrigia are not sufficiently
persuasive, therefore we evaluated them in the genus Elymus.
Keywords: Elymus, generic delimitation, Turkey, Pseudoroegneria, Thinopyrum
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