Myriactis

Farhani, Tayyebeh, Kazempour-Osaloo, Shahrokh, Zare-Maivan, Hassan & Mozaffarian, Valiollah, 2018, Evolutionary history of the tribe Astereae in the Flora Iranica area: Systematic implications, Phytotaxa 379 (1), pp. 95-117 : 111

Myriactis

Myriactis , included in the present study, is a small genus of 2–3 species which formed a well-supported clade.Within this clade, M. nepalensis Less. is united with two closest species M. wightii DC. and M. wallichii Less. , a sole representative of the genus in the Iranian Plateau. Similar to the analysis in Li et al. (2012), in the nuclear-gene tree the genus was placed in a clade with a successive grade of the three Aster species ( A. panduratus , A. auriculatus and A. pycnophyllus ), whereas in the plastid tree it formed a sister group with Dichrocephala . The different placements of those Aster species and Dichrocephala in the gene trees may be caused by chloroplast capture through hybridization/introgression event ( Garamszegi & Gonzalez-Voyer 2014), since Myriactis is different from these three species in having two- to multipleseriate ray florets, male disc florets and glandular collar. Moreover, irrespective of morphological differences between these two genera, the results of our analysis also indicate that A. panduratus , A. auriculatus and A. pycnophyllus do not belong to the Aster clade. Thus, treating those Aster species either as a new genus or as the expanded Myriactis requires further study.