Polylepis Australes T.Boza & M.Kessler, 2022

Boza Espinoza, Tatiana Erika & Kessler, Michael, 2022, A monograph of the genus Polylepis (Rosaceae), PhytoKeys 203, pp. 1-274 : 1

Section Polylepis Australes T.Boza & M.Kessler sect.nov.

Diagnosis.

Trees, 2-4 lateral leaflet pairs; lower leaflet surfaces glabrous, sparsely hispid or puberulous; fruits with irregular and pronounced wings, glabrous or sparsely hispid.

Type.

Polylepis australis Bitter.

Notes.

The sectional epithet Australes is a plural adjective agreeing in gender with Polylepis . Section Polylepis Australes contains two species with glabrous leaflet surfaces, 2-4 lateral leaflet pairs and winged fruits. Especially the latter are unique in Polylepis and justify placing the two species in a section of its own. Table 6 provides an overview of the arrangement of the taxa by different authors.

Climatic niches in Polylepis sect. Australes

The climatic niches of the two species are quite similar, but P. australis grows in slightly warmer and substantially wetter areas than P. neglecta (Fig. 62 ). In addition, being the southernmost species of the genus, P. australis grows in a strongly seasonal climate with warm summers and cold winters, which is unique in the genus.

Figures

Figure 12. Box plots showing the climatic niches of the species of the subsections Lanuginosae, Pauta and Pepea in relation to Mean Annual Temperature (MAT) (A) and Mean Annual Precipitation (MAP) (B). The ends of each box represent the upper and lower quartiles and the median is indicated with a bold line inside the box; the whisker lines extend to the highest and lowest observations, except when observations are higher or lower than the interquartile range (i. e. outliers), in which case they are indicated by a dot. Box plots that share the same lowercase letters within each subsection are not significantly different at p = 0.05. Vertical lines represent subsectional divisions.

Figure 62. Box plots showing the climatic niches of the species of the subsections Australes and Subsericantes in relation to MAT (A) and MAP (B). See Fig. 12 for details on data presentation.