Taxonomic Significance of Glume Morphology and Leaf Epidermal Characteristics in some Taxa of Tribe Aveneae (Poaceae)

The numerical classification of tribe Aveneae (Poaceae) is discussed regarding the glume morphology and silica skeleton morphologies. The present study dealt with 18 species belonging to 10 genera of the tribe to cover as many groups as possible within Aveneae. The total of 31 structural characters and 71 character states were scored comparatively. The resulted data matrix was analyzed under a combination of Euclidean distance measure and Ward’s clustering method included in the program package PC-ORD version 5. The resulted dendrogram separated the tribe into five basic sub-ordinate groups created from three major groups A, B and C. The taxonomic significance of these results was discussed. The results showed congruence between the clustering and PCA method, in suggesting three major groups and 5 sub-ordinate groups.