Open AccessThe Deschampsia cespitosa complex in central and northern Europe: a morphological analysis
Author(s) -
CHIAPELLA J.
Publication year - 2000
Publication title -
botanical journal of the linnean society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.872
H-Index - 68
eISSN - 1095-8339
pISSN - 0024-4074
DOI - 10.1111/j.1095-8339.2000.tb00547.x
Subject(s) - biology , subspecies , herbarium , botany , taxon , numerical taxonomy , taxonomy (biology) , zoology
Fifty‐four exomorphological characters were recorded from 130 herbarium specimens belonging to Deschampsia cespitosa (L.) P. Beauv. subsp. cespitosa, D. alpina (L.) Roem. et Schult, D. bottnica (Wahlenb.) Trim, D. cespitosa subsp. glauca (Hartm.) C. Hartm., D. littoralis (Gaudin) Reuter, D. cespitosa subsp. parviflora (Thuill.) K. Richter and D. wibeliana (Sond.) Pari. These were treated as Operational Taxonomical Units (OTUs) and studied using cluster analysis, principal component analysis and the Mann‐Whitney U‐test; box plots of selected quantitative characters were also made. To evaluate the relationship between environment and morphology, a redundancy analysis was carried out. Due to extensive overlapping in the diagnostic characters, all the taxa at specific level are reduced to subspecies of Deschampsia cespitosa. Geographical distribution is considered to be of considerable importance in the identification of the taxa.