Numerical taxonomy of Juniperus thurifera, J. excelsa and J. foetidissima (Cupressaceae) based on morphological characters

Abstract

Juniperus excelsa and J. thurifera are considered to originate from the same ancestor. As a result of occurring in geographically isolated refuges -J. excelsa in SE Europe and SW Asia and J. thurifera in SW Europe and NW Africa -their divergence could have taken place at the end of the Tertiary, with the climate cooling. Juniperus foetidissima occurs in SE Europe and SW Asia in territories shared with J. excelsa and is similar to and sometimes misidentified with it. The occurrence of the latter two species over the same area suggests they should be more similar to each other than to the geographically distant J. thurifera. Four populations of J. excelsa ssp. excelsa, four of J. thurifera and two of Juniperus foetidissima were examined on the basis of features of 10 cones and 10 shoots of 18-36 specimens each. Results of discrimination analysis, Mahalanobis distances and cluster analysis showed great similarity to J. excelsa and J. thurifera, while J. foetidissima was more distant. The results support the hypothesis of a common ancestor of J. excelsa and J. thurifera, but suggest another origin of J. foetidissima.

Morphological differentiation supports the genetic pattern of the geographic structure of Juniperus thurifera (Cupressaceae)

“…Average values of particular characters of cone, seed and sprout with leaves of J. thurifera found during study is generally similar to the data reported earlier (do Amaral Franco 1986;Marcysiak et al 2007;Romo and Boratyński 2007), but reveal broader ranges of distribution. The marginal values of particular characters found in our study, taking into account the numbers of tested individuals can, with high probability, be treated as real minima and maxima, while data published earlier resulted from only a few measurements on the herbarium materials (do Amaral Franco 1986) or only few characters (Barbero et al 1994).…”

“…The seeds were taken off the soaked cones and dried after measuring. The thickness of the ultimate lateral branchlet with leaves (ST) was measured following methods described by Marcysiak et al (2007). The measurement was performed on dry material.…”

“…The analysis of European populations showed two different groups, the first including populations from the Alps, Pyrenees, northern part of the Iberian Peninsula and Corsica, and the second overlapping those from the central part of the Iberian Peninsula (Terrab et al 2008). The biometrical examinations of four European populations (Mazur et al 2005;Marcysiak et al 2007) revealed the great differences among them, especially between one from the Alps and three from the Iberian Peninsula (Mazur et al 2005). Taking into account the last result we hypothesised that J. thurifera's phenetic diversity pattern should be similar to AFLP geographic differentiation and is mainly a consequence of the history of the species.…”

Morphometric traits and sexual dimorphisms do not strongly differentiate populations of Zeravshan juniper (Juniperus seravschanica Kom.) in Kyrgyzstan

“…Morphometric traits (e.g. Marcysiak and Mazur, 2007) have been seldom employed. For the first time to the best of the authors' knowledge, this study tackles morphometric variation of needles and cones of J. seravschanica by comparing eight natural Kyrgyz populations.…”

Differences among Juniperus excelsa populations as revealed at morphological traits

“…, Pinus sylvestris L. (Ayan et al 2005;ªevik et al 2010) and Juniperus excelsa Bieb. M. (Barbero et al 1994;Mazur et al 2004;Marcysiak et al 2007;Douaihy et al 2012). Besides, one study of Crimean juniper estimated the amount of genetic variation based on morphological characteristics within and among populations and heritability for a limited number of cone, seed and juvenile seedling characteristics (Yücedað et al 2010), and two studies applied genetic markers to assess genetic diversity within and among populations (Douaihy et al 2011, Douaihy et al 2012Yücedað and Gailing 2013).…”