Gagea sect. Bulbiferae Levichev

Zarrei, Mehdi, Wilkin, Paul, Ingrouille, Martin J. & Chase, And Mark W., 2011, A revised infrageneric classification for Gagea Salisb. (Tulipeae; Liliaceae): insights from DNA sequence and morphological data, Phytotaxa 15, pp. 44-56 : 48

Gagea sect. Bulbiferae Levichev

The distinctness of G. sect. Bulbiferae has been previously disputed ( Zarrei et al. 2009). In analyses conducted by Peterson et al. (2008) using nrITS and plastid sequences, G. bulbifera (Pall.) Salisbury (1806: 557) , the only species from this section included in their study, was in their clade A, corresponding to G. sect. Platyspermum (clade C) in Zarrei et al. (2009). In the last paper, G. bulbifera is sister to clade C with a bootstrap (BP) of 100% in the analysis using nrITS sequence data (Figure 1, Zarrei et al. 2009); in the trees from plastid data (Figure 4, Zarrei et al. 2009) it is in a polytomy with all other clades. This species has the microreticulate pollen type along with G. dschungarica and G. caroli-kochii Grossheim (1935: 558 ; Zarrei & Zarre 2005). Gagea bulbifera was included in pedicel type II and basal leaf type VI by Zarrei et al. (2010d). Pascher (1907) suggested that this species belongs to G. sect. Stipitatae, which has a type II pedicel and type IV basal leaf. Morphological characters indicate the placement of G. bulbifera in G. section Plecostigma . However, more data are needed to solve the problem of the placement of this section. At present, distinctness of G. sect. Bulbiferae is not supported by any of the available data. It fell as sister to G. sect. Platyspermum in molecular analyses ( Zarrei et al. 2009) so we place these species in this section here.