Numerical analyses of macromorphological characters of specimens of S. lessingiana, S. borysthenica and S. baktashevae, nested the last one among individuals of S. borysthenica. We propose synonymization of S. baktashevae, the species described in 2014 and known only from type material, with S. borysthenica, and provide morphological comparisons of the taxa.
Keywords: multivariate analysis, Stipa lessingiana, synonymizationStipa Linnaeus (1753: 78) s.l. is one of the largest genera of Poaceae. Circumscribed broadly it comprises over 300 species common in steppe zones of Central Asia, Southern Europe, Australia and the Americas. However, according to the results of recent studies based on morphological and genetic data, all Australian, American and a subset of Eurasian species of Stipa s.l. have been removed from the genus, limiting Stipa s.s. to about 150 species, distributed in warm temperate regions of the Old World (Roshevitz 1934, Barkworth 2007, Bor 1970, Tzvelev 1968, 1976, Martinovský 1980, Freitag 1985, Wu & Phillips 2006, Hamasha et al. 2012, Romaschenko et al. 2012, Nobis 2013, Nobis et al. 2016a, 2016b, Nobis & Gudkova 2016.Stipa baktashevae Tzvelev (2014: 7) was recently described from material collected on sandy grasslands in the Republic of Kalmykia (southwest Russia). The author pointed out that the species originated from hybridization of S. borysthenica Klokov ex Prokudin (1951: 25) and S. lessingiana Trinius & Ruprecht (1842: 79). Based on the original description S. baktashevae has morphological characteristics intermediate between the two putative parental species, including: leaves of vegetative shoots 0.4-0.5 mm in diameter, abaxial surface scabrous due to pointed tubercles, adaxial surface scabrous; ligules very short, 0.4-0.5 mm long; lemmas 15-18 mm long, distance from the end of ventral line of hairs to the top of anthecium 4-5 mm; awns 25-32 cm long, bigeniculate with lower part (column) glabrous and upper part (seta) plumose, with hairs 3-4.5 mm long (Tzvelev 2014).During revision of herbarium materials of Stipa we came across type material of Stipa baktashevae and found morphological variation in the taxon to differ somewhat from that described in the protologue. Based on measurements made by us on the holotype-the only known specimen of the taxon-ligules of vegetative leaves are 0.4-1.5 mm long (not 0.4-0.5 mm, as stated in the diagnosis); hairs on the lower part of seta are generally 4.0-4.5 mm long (not 3.0-4.5 mm long) and the anthecium is 16.5-18.5 mm long (instead of 15-18 mm long). In S. borysthenica ligules of vegetative leaves are (0.4-)0.9-2.2(-3.4) mm long, hairs on seta are 4.5-6.9 mm long (however, their length can be variable, and occasional hairs somewhat shorter than 4.5 mm long were found) and the anthecium is 16-20 mm long. In S. lessingiana leaves are scabrous to hairy-scabrous (due to prickles, spinules and hairs, which occur on the abaxial leaf-surface), ligules of vegetative leaves are 0.05-0.25 mm long, hairs on seta are generally 1.8-3.5 mm long and t...