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AEGIALOPHILA PUMILA (L.) BOISS.
(ASTERACEAE): A NEW SPECIES IN ITALY
Noemi Tornadore
a
, Rossella Marcucci
a
& Silvano Marchiori
b
a
Department of Biology, University of Padua, G. Colombo, 3, Padua,
I-35121, Italy
b
Department of Biology, University of Lecce, Lecce, Italy
Published online: 19 Apr 2013.
To cite this article: Noemi Tornadore , Rossella Marcucci & Silvano Marchiori (1998) AEGIALOPHILA PUMILA
(L.) BOISS. (ASTERACEAE): A NEW SPECIES IN ITALY, Israel Journal of Plant Sciences, 46:1, 61-65, DOI:
10.1080/07929978.1998.10676709
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/07929978.1998.10676709
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Israel Journal of Plant Sciences Vol. 46 I998 pp. 6I-65
AEGIALOPHILA PUMILA (L.) BOISS. (ASTERACEAE): A NEW SPECIES IN ITALY
NoEMI ToRNADORE,"* RossELLA MARcuccr," AND SrLVANO MARCHIORib
Department of Biology, University of Padua, G. Colombo, 3, Padua I-35/21, Italy
hDepartment of Biology, University of Leece, Leece, Italy
(Received 8 August 1997 and in revised form 7 October 1997)
ABSTRACT
Aegialophila pumila has recently been found in Apulia, Salento, SE Italy, and is new
for Italy. Karyological study shows 2n = 22, and the karyotype differs from popula-
tions found in Crete and Libya. The species shows a 99% germination of seeds. The
environmental and karyological data suggest the hypothesis that Aegialophila
pumila (L.) Boiss. is native to Apulia.
INTRODUCTION
Aegialophila pumila (L.) Boiss. belongs to the
Asteraceae family; it is a psammophyte plant, quite rare,
which grows on sandy coasts in the northeast of Africa
and in the southwest of Asia. In Europe it has been
found on the west coasts of Crete (Wagenitz, 1975;
Dostal, 1976). The species has been referred to as: Cen-
taurea pumilis L., C. pumilio L., C. pumila L.,
Aegialophila pumila (L.) Boiss., and A. pumilio (L.)
Boiss. In 1755 Linnaeus described a plant and named it
Centaurea pumilis L.; the same name was retained by
Linnaeus in 1759. Later, Linnaeus (1763, 1764)
changed the name to pumila. In 1849, Heldreich (in
Boissier, 1849) described the new genus Aegialophila,
including in it the species A. pumila Boiss., without (L.),
and quoting as synonymous, Centaurea mucronata
Forskru. In the Flora Aegyptiaco-Arabica of Forskru
(1775), this centaury is, however, described as having
solitary capitulum, sessile leaves, and short stem with
hair only at the base-all characters not common to the
taxon considered. Richter (1835) wrongly reports C.
pumilio L. as the binomial described by Linnaeus
(17.55). Vaccari (1915) uses the pair A. pumila (L.)
B01ss. for Cyrenaica. Pampanini (1924) and Maugini
( 1931) a.lso use the same name in the same region, but
they omtt the (L.). In 1973 Greuter calls the species A.
pumilio (L.) Boiss. Wagenitz (1955, 1975) considers
Aegialophila Boiss. et Heldr. as a section of the genus
Centaurea L. Dostal (1976) also calls it Centaurea
pumilio L. Feinbrun-Dothan (1978) revalues the genus
Aegialophila Boiss. et Heldr. so that the binomial
quoted for the taxon becomes A. pumilio (L.) Boiss.
The genus Aegialophila therefore includes the spe-
cies pumila and Aegialophila cretica Boiss. et Heldr.,
also called C. cretica (Boiss. et Heldr.) Nyman (Nyman,
1854) or C. aegialophila Wagenitz (Wagenitz, 1974).
This species can be found on the east coast of Crete,
Cyprus, and S. Anatolia (Wagenitz, 1975; Dostal,
1976).
Aegialophila pumila (L.) Boiss. has some character-
istics in common both with the genus Centaurea and
with Leuzea DC. The latter is considered by Fiori (1927)
as a section of the former. In particular, our species is
morphologically very similar to C. acaulis L. (native to
Tunisia and Algeria and later naturalized in
Lampedusa). These two species differ in inflorescence
color: yellowish in C. acaulis and pinkish-violet in
A. pumila.
The morphological characteristics of the three genera
are shown in Table 1.
MATERIAL AND METHODS
The Apulian population comes from the Ionian coast of
SE Italy, next to Torre S. Giovanni (Ugento-Lecce)
(185'E, 3952'N). The site, already observed at the
beginning of the 1960s, is composed of a few hundred
individuals, distributed over about 2000 m
2
(Marchiori
et al., 1996a,b).
The karyological analysis was carried out on root
*Author to whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
tomado@civ.bio.unipd.it
1998 Laser Pages Publishing Ltd., Jerusalem
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Table 1
Morphological characteristics of genera Centaurea, Leuzea, and Aegialophila
Centaurea L.
one or more capitula
capitula varying 0
radiate and nonradiate florets
varying involucre bracts
pappus usually present, with scabrid
or plumose hairs and persistent or
caducous
glabrous to pubescent cypsela
basic chromosome number
X= 7,8,9,10,11,12,13
Leuzea DC. Aegialophila Boiss. et Heldr.
one capitulum 2 capitula on the average
capitula 2-3 em 0 capitula 2-4 em 0
nonradiate florets radiate florets
nonmucronate involucre bracts
pappus connate into an annulus at the
base, with plumose or barbellate hairs
and caducous
glabrous cypsela
basic chromosome number x = 9
involucre bracts with an apical spine
pappus connate into an annulus at the base,
with plumose hairs and caducous
pubescent cypsela
basic chromosome number x = 11
Fig. 1. Aegialophila pwnila (L.) Boiss.: (A) habit; (B) capitulum.
Israel Journal of Plant Sciences 46 1998
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Fig. 2. Aegialophila pumila (L.) Boiss.: (A) and (C) cypsela; (B) pappus with the annulus (x7.1); (D) pollen grain.
tips, pretreated in a saturated aqueous solution of 8-
hydroxyquinoline; fixed in a Carnoy mixture, hydro-
lyzed at 60 oc in HCI IN, and stained with Feulgen
technique (Darlington and La Cour, 1960). The karyo-
type is described according to Levan et al. (1964 ). The
karyogram was built using the Cromo II program
(Pavone and Salmeri, 1992). Fruits and pollens were
examined using SEM (Stereoscan 260, Cambridge) af-
ter dehydration and metallization of the specimens.
RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
MORPHOLOGICAL FEATURES
The floral involucre is composed of a bracteate ap-
pendix bearing a long and sharp thorn (5-9 mm)
(Fig. 1); the pappus is bright white, fixed at the base into
a ring and composed of several serials of plumose hairs
of different lengths (Fig. 2B). Cypsela are 3-5 mm,
covered with long, simple, unicellular hairs, sparser at
Tornadore, Marcucci, and Marchiori I Aegialophila pumila (L.) Boiss
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11111111 ii 1111 ii 111111
1111111111111111111111
Fig. 3. Aegialophila pumila (L.) Boiss.: Karyogram, 2n = 2x =
22: 8m +2m'+ 4m +2m'+ 6m.
the pappus base. In the central part, at the base, there is a
well-developed umbo (Fig. 2A,C). The pollen is
40-60 flm long and 30-48 flm wide; it is oval-elliptical
in shape and trizonocolporate with tectate exine and
nanospinulae (Fig. 2D).
KARYOLOGY
The population we analyzed confirms the chromo-
some number (2n = 22) found by Kamari and Matthas
(1986) and by Brullo et al. (1990) in specimens from
Crete and Libya, respectively.
The chromosomes are small, metacentric, and sup-
plied in the 5th and the 8th positions with small satellites
on the short arm (Fig. 3).
2n = 22: 8m +2m'+ 4m +2m'+ 6m
This formula differs from that of Kamari and Matthas
(1986) by the absence of submetacentric chromosomes,
and differs from the observations of Brullo et al. (1990)
by the presence of satellites.
GERMINATION EXPERIMENTS
Fifty seeds from the Apulian site were germinated in
the Botanic Garden of Padua in a greenhouse on a soil
mixture. Germination was 99%. The seedlings, kept in
the greenhouse, have developed and flowered both in
1996 and at the end of March 1997.
These plants differ somewhat from wild ones in their
hairiness and stem height.
NOMENCLATURE
From its general aspect and the presence of an annu-
lus at the base of the pappus, we think that this plant can
be properly included in the genus Aegialophila Boiss. et
Heldr. In our opinion, the name should be A. pumila (L.)
Boiss., as used by Linnaeus (1763), replacing pumilis
(Linnaeus, 1755). The Linnaeus binomial is correct for
the Botanic International Code and it is also the first
name given to this species.
TAXON'S AUTOCHTHONY
It is quite improbable that a species so showy during
the flowering period could have been unobserved by the
Israel Journal of Plant Sciences 46 1998
several botanists who collected in Salento. However, the
taxon was first observed along the Apulian coasts in
1961 and then not reported for 35 years. In a recent
census, 500 individuals were counted. Our karyological
analysis confirms the number found for the Cyrenaic
and Cretan species, but it also shows some small differ-
ences. These concern the presence of SAT -chromo-
somes in the first case and a greater karyotype's symme-
try in the second one. The environment where A. pumila
grows in Italy is very similar to that of the southeast
Mediterranean basin; therefore the Apulian populations
could represent a relict site of the species' distribution.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
We thank Prof. E. Nardi for his valuable advice, Mr. M.
Brentan, technician at the Geobotanic Section at the
Department of Biology, University of Padua, and Mr. R.
Rebellato, technician at the Botanic Garden of Padua.
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Tornadore, Marcucci, and Marchiori I Aegia1ophila purnila (L.) Boiss
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