Drymocallis rupestris (L.) Sojak

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

Drymocallis rupestris (L.) Sojak

Drymocallis rupestris (L.) Soják in Čas. Nár. Muz. Praze, Rada Přír. 154(3-4): 118 (1989)

Materials

Type status: Other material. Occurrence : recordedBy: P. Doumas; Taxon : scientificName: Drymocallis rupestris; family: Rosaceae ; genus: Drymocallis ; specificEpithet: rupestris; taxonRank: species; Location : continent: Europe ; country: Greece; stateProvince: Nomos Xanthis ; verbatimLocality: Mt. Rodopi, area of Koula; verbatimElevation: 1540 m; verbatimLatitude: 41°19′; verbatimLongitude: 24°49′; Identification: identifiedBy: P. Doumas, K. Goula & Th. Constantinidis; Event: eventDate: 23 May 2021; habitat: rocky places, in openings of forest with Pinus peuce; Record Level: collectionID: 31; institutionCode: ATHU; basisOfRecord: Specimen

Taxon discussion

A very rare species in the Greek territory. There is only one previously confirmed record from Mt. Belles (also known as Mt. Kerkini) by Strid (2012), while a historical collection on Mt. Olimbos by Pichler in 1874 may need confirmation (Fig. 17 ). This new locality from the Rodopi Mountain range comes not as a surprise, as Drymocallis rupestris has been recorded from the Bulgarian part of the same mountain ( Soják 2011). Our collected plants (Fig. 21 ) have short stems 10-16 cm high (in contrast to the 15-60 cm high stems of the central European collections) and a rather variable indumentum on leaf petioles and pedicels consisting of mostly patent hairs that become obliquely-patent below the flowers. Morphologically, they may represent transition forms between subsp. Drymocallis rupestris rupestris and subsp. Drymocallis rupestris banatica (Th. Wolf) Soják. The Rodopi plants grow on rocky slopes, in openings of pine forest and, because of their small size, resemble the Bulgarian dwarf specimens (5-10 cm tall) of subsp. Drymocallis rupestris rupestris discussed by Soják (2011). Presumably, the adaptation to rocky substrates and a more xeric environment are responsible for the dwarf habit of our D. rupestris samples, but also of the related D. halacsyana (Degen) Kurtto & Strid found on Mt. Saos of Samothraki Island, ca. 110 km to the south-east.

Figures

Figure 17. Distribution map of Convolvulus suendermannii, Lomelosia rhodopensis, Drymocallis rupestris and Saxifraga pedemontana subsp. cymosa in Greece.

Figure 21. Drymocallis rupestris from Mt Rodopi (photo: P. Doumas).