Elwendia kuhitangi (Nevski, 1937) Pimenov & Kljuykov

Kljuykov, Eugene V., Lazkov, Georgii A., Degtjareva, Galina V., Zakharova, Ekaterina A., Ukrainskaja, Uljana A., Lyskov, Dmitry F. & Samigullin, Tahir H., 2022, Taxonomic revision of critical taxa of Elwendia (Umbelliferae-Apioideae) from Tajikistan and neighbouring countries, with descriptions of three new species from the Pamir-Alay and distributional novelties, Phytotaxa 543 (5), pp. 255-273 : 267-268

The Elwendia kuhitangi – E. salsa complex in the Pamir-Alay

Elwendia kuhitangi was described by Nevski (1937) from the Kuhitang Range as Bunium kuhitangi Nevski (1937: 274) . In the protologue, a detailed description of mature fruits that is required for certain identification is lacking. In floristic publications, all high-mountain dwarf plants occurring in the Pamir-Alay from the Kuhitang and Western Hissar Ranges to Darwaz ( Korovin 1950, 1959; Kljuykov & Pimenov 1983; Korovin et al. 1984) and in North Afghanistan and East Iran ( Rechinger 1987) passed under the name B. kuhitangi . Elwendia salsa was first described as Bunium salsum Korovin (1924: 86) from the vicinities of Samarkand and treated as closely related to Elwendia kuhitangi by Kljuykov (1988). In contrast to E. kuhitangi , E. salsa is morphologically more fully characterised and has a broader distribution area in midlands and low mountains of the Western Pamir-Alay and Western Tian-Shan.

Kljuykov (1988) formally described Bunium subsect. Salsa to accommodate E. kuhitangi and E. salsa . The shared characters used to justify this taxonomy were as follows: fruits with a strong smell, hardly separating into mericarp, pedicels length equal to a fruit; any of these characters is not unique in Elwendia . According to our results, E. kuhitangi and E. salsa represent a distinct lineage, placed in a clade together with E. ugamica . Thus, the morphology-based classification was confirmed by our phylogenetic analysis.

Based on the present study, we expand the description of E. kuhitangi with fruit characters and propose diagnostic characters to distinguish between E. kuhitangi s.str. and E. salsa s.str., such as the length of terminal segments of the uppermost stem leaves (3–5 mm vs. 7–12 mm), number of umbel rays (2–3 vs. 5–10), shape and size of mericarps (narrowly linear vs. linear). Besides, the fruits of E. kuhitangi separate easier into mericarps and have a less expressed smell.

With regards to the distribution, E. kuhitangi is restricted to the Kuhitang Range (Tukmenistan, Uzbekistan) ( Kljuykov et al. 2018), whereas E. salsa is characterised by a broader distribution range from Uzbekistan and Tajikistan to Kyrgyzstan ( Korovin 1959; Kljuykov & Pimenov 1983; Korovin et al. 1984; Kljuykov et al. 2018).