Bidens tinctoria (Nutt.) Baill. ex Sennikov 2021

Sennikov, Alexander N. & Lazkov, Georgy A., 2021, The first checklist of alien vascular plants of Kyrgyzstan, with new records and critical evaluation of earlier data. Contribution 1, Biodiversity Data Journal 9, pp. 75590-75590 : 75590

Bidens tinctoria (Nutt.) Baill. ex Sennikov 2021

Bidens tinctoria (Nutt.) Baill. [Hist. Pl. (Baillon) 8: 305 (1882)] ex Sennikov, comb. nova - Coreopsis tinctoria Nutt., J. Acad. Nat. Sci. Philadelphia 2: 114 (1821).

Diagnosis

The species can be easily recognised by its ray flowers, which are typically yellow with a large red spot at the base, but sometimes purely yellow or red. Leaves are nearly sessile, pinnately divided with long and narrow lateral lobes.

Distribution

Native distribution

This species is native to North America (from southern Canada to northern Mexico) ( Strother 2006).

Secondary distribution

Neophyte in Central America, Europe, Western and Southern Asia, Southern Africa.

Distribution in Central Asia

First recorded as an alien in Kyrgyzstan here.

This species was common in ornamental cultivation in Uzbekistan already by the 1960s, although not reported as escaped from cultivation ( Nabiev 1962a). However, the contemporary literature on the flora of Kyrgyzstan ( Sultanova 1963, Sultanova 1965) made no mention of the species, probably because of confusion with Cosmos sulphureus Cav. (cf. Verloove and Lambinon 2008). Neither was it mentioned in the latest manual of the Central Asian flora ( Adylov and Zuckerwanik 1993), apparently due to the lack of spontaneous records.

Currently the species was observed in ornamental cultivation in Kyrgyzstan (Fig. 2 ).

Distribution in Kyrgyzstan

Western Tian-Shan (Fig. 3 ).

We discovered this species once and for the first time in 2016. A few flowering individuals were observed in ruderal places around an isolated gasoline station on the main road along the Naryn River in Jalal-Abad Region, at an elevation about 800 m a.s.l.

Ecology

Prairies, on moist, sandy or clayey soils in the native distribution area ( Strother 2006); disturbed places and waste ground in the secondary distribution area.

Biology

Annual.

Notes

The taxonomy of Coreopsideae Lindl. has been controversial since the original description of its main genera, Bidens L. and Coreopsis L. Tadesse et al. (1996) stressed that the main diagnostic characters traditionally used to delimit these genera (achene awns and wings) are unreliable because of the presence of intermediate states and geographic disparity; the differences in plant habit were used to support the other characters. Many studies (e.g. Mort et al. 2008, Knope et al. 2020) demonstrated that both Bidens and Coreopsis are polyphyletic and resolved as a number of clades intermixed with each other. Since many African (but not American) species of Coreopsis have already been reclassified in Bidens , Banfi et al. (2017) completed such transfers for the Euro+Med area. We agree that Bidens and Coreopsis are not recognisable by morphology and cannot be maintained on phylogenetic grounds and, therefore, accept Bidens as a single broadly defined genus.

The transfer of Coreopsis tinctoria Nutt. was commonly attributed to Baillon (1882). In this book, the taxonomic placement of Coreopsis as a section of Bidens was suggested and some constituent species were listed including Coreopsis tinctoria . Since the combination " Bidens tinctoria " was only implied but did not appear in print in that text, it was not validly published according to Art. 35.2 of the ICN ( Turland et al. 2018). It was not inadvertently validated later by Jackson (1893), who indexed this species name but typeset it in Italics and, therefore, indicated its taxonomic status as a synonym ( Greuter 1985). It was not validly published by Banfi et al. (2017) because these authors did not provide a full and direct reference to the basionym publication. Since we cannot trace any other acceptance of this binomial in botanical literature, we assume that it remains invalidly published. For this reason, this species name is treated as a new combination here.

In the past, Coreopsis basalis (A.Dietr.) S.F.Blake (syn. C. drummondii (D.Don) Torr. & A.Gray) was reported as the only species of this genus present in ornamental cultivation in Kyrgyzstan ( Sultanova 1965). This species is immediately distinct from C. tinctoria in its much wider, elliptic to lanceolate leaf lobes ( Strother 2006). So far, C. basalis has never been reported as escaped from cultivation in Kyrgyzstan.

Introduction to Kyrgyzstan

Period of introduction

Neophyte.

We collected the species for the first time in 2016. This introduction falls within the period of independence of Kyrgyzstan (since 1991).

Pathways of introduction

Transport - Contaminant: Food contaminant (including of live food).

This species is a popular ornamental plant, which was widely cultivated in Central Asia (data from Uzbekistan) already by the 1960s ( Nabiev 1962a). However, no evidence of any ornamental cultivation was observed at the time of our record.

The ruderal ground, on which the species was seen in Kyrgyzstan, has been used as a parking and turning place for long-distance trucks and other transport. Since the species is known as a crop weed in North America ( Everitt et al. 2007) and has been recorded as having arrived with contaminated grain in Europe (e.g. Suominen 1979, Borisova and Golubeva 2006, Verloove et al. 2020, Verloove 2021), we assume the same pathway of introduction also occurred in our locality.

Further dispersal does not take place.

Invasion status

Casual (ephemeral, no viable population observed).

Evidence of impact

Agriculture - no impact (not observed as a weed). Native ecosystems - no impact (not observed in native habitats). Urban areas - minor impact (ruderal occurrence, casual).

Trend

No expansion observed, no dynamics known.

Figures

Figure 2. Coreopsis tinctoria in cultivation in Kyrgyzstan (photo by G. Lazkov, September 2021).

Figure 3. Distribution of Bidens tinctoria (triangle) and Bunias orientalis (dots) in Kyrgyzstan.