Cousinia beckeri Trautvetter (1886: 457)

Rastegar, Azad, Attar, Farideh & Mirtadzadini, Mansour, 2018, Novelties in Iranian Cousinia sect. Cynaroideae (Asteraceae, Cardueae): new taxa and taxonomic notes, Phytotaxa 343 (3), pp. 227-239 : 237

1. Cousinia beckeri Trautvetter (1886: 457) .

In Mehregan & Kadereit (2008), this species was excluded from C. sect. Cynaroideae just based on a wrong citation. These authors mentioned that C. beckeri , based on its chromosome number 2x = 18 (versus 2x = 24, Ghaffari et al. 2000) and morphological characters (unusually narrow phyllaries, linear-lanceolate appendages), should be excluded from the section. We should emphasize that morphological characters of capitulum in C. sect. Cynaroideae are not homogenous and narrow phyllaries with linear-lanceolate appendages may be found in some other taxa such as C. mobayeni Ghahreman & Attar (2000: 2) and C. bornmulleri Winkler (1897: 235) .

By an accurate investigation among the references we found other facts. Ghaffari et al. (2000) had no chromosome number report of C. beckeri and just noted that there is only one base chromosome number in C. sect. Cynaroideae , i.e. x=12. The presence of x=9 seems to be controversial and doubtful. Chuksanova ( Bolkhovskikh et al. 1969) reported the chromosome number of C. beckeri as 2n=18. The background of this report is unclear and likely spurious because no background data (voucher specimen or locality information) was provided in that publication or elsewhere later ( Takhtajan 1990). It seems that this chromosome count is erroneous either due to a misidentification of the species or a techincal mistake in chromosome counting.