Taraxacum cylleneum, Furnkranz, 1969

Kirschner, Jan, Štěpánek, Jan, Doostmohammadi, Moslem & Zeisek, Vojtěch, 2021, Taraxacum assemanii represents a new section: A revision of the misinterpreted Taraxacum primigenium, and the elucidation of the enigmatic Taraxacum section Primigenia (Compositae, Crepidinae), Phytotaxa 520 (2), pp. 117-136 : 130

Taraxacum cylleneum , a taxon resembling T. primigenium

Plants later to be described as T. cylleneum appeared under several names in the literature. Handel-Mazzetti (1907) revealed a few specimens of T. cylleneum hidden under the name Crepis columnae in the herbarium WU, and included it in T. glaciale (sect. Glacialia). The same position is occupied by T. cylleneum in an early paper by van Soest (1958: 61, 62, Fig. 1 ), where T. glaciale was shown to have a disjunct distribution in the Apennines and on the Peloponnese. Quézel & Contandriopoulos (1965) revealed T. cylleneum in the Oros Kyllini Range, Peloponnese, and listed it under the name of T. bithynicum (for a detailed analysis of T. bithynicum , see Gürdal et al. 2018). It was Fürnkranz (1969) who recognized the Oros Kyllini plants as a separate species, T. cylleneum . As regards its sectional position, he gave T. microcephalum Pomel as the closest neighbour, and classified it as a member of a section listed under an invalid name by van Soest (1958), Taraxacum sect. Microcephala . The latter sectional name has never been validated, and van Soest (1958) defined it by the enumeration of its members: T. microcephalum “p. max. p.”, T. oliganthum and T. primigenium .

Later authors include T. cylleneum in T. sect. Rhodotricha in a narrowed sense ( Doll 1982: 531, together with T. fulvipile Harvey (1865: 527) , T. primigeniforme and T. kotschyi van Soest (1966: 365) ; Sterk 1987: 65, together with T. primigenium , T. fulvipile and another five species not enumerated in that work). Richards (1991) analyzed T. cylleneum in detail and included it in T. sect. Rhodotricha again, together with T. primigenium , T. microcephaloides van Soest (1974: 263) and T. assemanii , and characterized this group as “isolated Tyrrhenian relicts from the mid-Tertiary, representing the earliest development of the genus”.

Both the above literature sources (with numerous confusions and misplacements) and the relative resemblance to T. primigenium make T. cylleneum relevant to the present discussion.

Figures

FIGURE 1. Neighbour-Net constructed from uncorrected P-distances in SplitsTree based on nrDNA ITS sequences of sexuals of 30 Taraxacum sections and separate sexual species. The names of selected taxa treated in the present paper are marked. The presentation is simplified; details of the analysis are available on request. Modified from Kirschner et al. (2021).