Aster bachtiaricus, Mozaffarian, 1996

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 : 109

Aster bachtiaricus

The present molecular data clearly demonstrated that A. bachtiaricus formed an isolated branch, far distantly related from the bulk of Aster , placed between the basal lineages of the Southern Hemisphere origin and the rest of Astereae . This conclusion was first reached by Jafari et al. (2015); however, in their analysis, the species was weakly united with the large polytomy at the crown of the tribe. Our findings suggest that the species must have dispersed from the Southern Hemisphere (e.g., southern Africa) to Iran at the earlier stages of the Astereae evolution. The species was described from the Zagros Mountains, southwestern Iran, two decades ago ( Mozaffarian 1996). It is distinguished from the typical asters in having thick woody rootstock, many heteromorphic leaves, solitary capitula, 4-seriate phyllaries, reflexed ligulate flowers and 1-seriate pappus. Thus, on the basis of the molecular data as well as the morphological characters, we exclude this species from Aster , elevate it to the generic rank, and name it Iranoaster Kaz. Osaloo, Farhani & Mozaff. (see Taxonomic treatment).