Aster amellus L.

Doumas, Panayiotis, Goula, Katerina & Constantinidis, Theophanis, 2022, Thirty-two new and noteworthy floristic records from north-eastern Greece, Biodiversity Data Journal 10, pp. 81817-81817 : 81817

Aster amellus L.

Aster amellus Aster amellus L.

Materials

Type status: Other material. Occurrence : recordedBy: P. Doumas; Taxon : scientificName: Aster amellus; family: Asteraceae ; genus: Aster ; specificEpithet: amellus; taxonRank: species; Location : continent: Europe ; country: Greece; stateProvince: Nomos Dramas; verbatimLocality: Mt. Rodopi, ca. 1 km NW of Trachoni settlement; verbatimElevation: 753 m; verbatimLatitude: 41°21′; verbatimLongitude: 24°37′; Identification: identifiedBy: P. Doumas, K. Goula & Th. Constantinidis; Event: eventDate: 12 September 2021; habitat: Quercus sp. forest, waysides, margins and clearings; Record Level: collectionID: 59; institutionCode: ATHU; basisOfRecord: Specimen

Taxon discussion

This is a new addition to the Greek flora. Previous old reports are considered erroneous.

The Aster amellus records in Greece have a long history. Old reports from the dry habitats of Attiki near Athens under either A. amellus , as in Boissier (1875) (hab. in collibus apricis Atticae) or A. atticus Pall. ( Tournefort 1700, Jacquin 1778, Sibthorp and Smith 1813) were soon disputed. Halácsy (1902) noted that these old records were probably erroneous; his opinion is followed in the contemporary literature (see Dimopoulos et al. 2013). Fraas (1845), however, referred to A. amellus as a plant of salt marshes and coastal swamps from the area of Faliro, south-west of the Athens centre and used the common name " valtokratis " (from the Greek words βάλτος, i.e. marsh and κράτος, i.e. power, strength) to identify it. Such a habitat is alien to A. amellus , a species of drier localities that colonises grasslands, slopes, waysides, scrub formations and wood margins and clearings ( Merxmüller and Schreiber 1976). It is quite safe to assume that Fraas (1845), when mentioning A. amellus , was actually referring to Tripolium pannonicum (Jacq.) Dobrocz. ( Aster tripolium L.), a plant known for its preference for marshes and brackish waters and still found in Attiki. Due to lack of any further evidence during the last 150 years, A. amellus was justifiably excluded from the Greek flora.

Our collection of Aster amellus from the Rodopi area (Fig. 5 ) is the first that confirms this species as an indigenous member of the Greek flora. Its collection locality lies at a linear distance of ca. 8.5 km south of the Greek-Bulgarian border. According to the distribution map provided by Münzbergová et al. (2011), the Greek locality is marginally outside the total distribution range of the species. It is implied that A. amellus was suspiciously absent from the Greek territory. From a morphological point of view, the species is polymorphic and includes three different cytotypes: diploids (2n=2x=18), tetraploids (2n=4x=36) and hexaploids (2n=6x=54). Certain literature sources and taxonomic databases recognise subspecific entities that are mostly based on the treatment of Tamamshyan (1959). The Greek samples are pubescent on stems and mostly have scabrid leaves, bear numerous small capitula 9-11 mm wide (ligules excluded), with green, subacute and ciliate involucral bracts often pubescent dorsally. They come closer to subsp. Aster amellus bessarabicus (Rchb.) Soó, but the whole group needs further investigation.

Figures

Figure 5. Aster amellus from Mt. Rodopi (photo: P. Doumas).