IntroductionDuring field studies for a project investigating Hieracium s. str. and Pilosella Hill species in Turkey, an interesting Pilosella species was found in the Ilgaz mountains, North Anatolia. A search of herbaria (especially B, BP, E, G-BOIS, KRAM, M, P, W, and WU) and the literature revealed that taxon P. macrotricha (Boiss.) F.W. Schultz & Sch.Bip. (Sell and West, 1975) is heterogeneous and consists of at least 2 species. One is the original taxon of Boissier, which was interpreted later by Zahn (1922-30) as H. macrotrichum = H. procerum > macranthum. The other species is a morphological intermediate between P. echioides s.l. and P. alpicola s.l. and is very distinctive with its densely sericeous-lanate involucre, few capitula, patently pilose stem and leaves covered with dense, patent simple eglandular hairs up to 8 mm long.Our paper aims to: 1) describe a new diploid species of Pilosella, 2) discuss the relationships of the new species with similar species, and 3) lectotypify the name H. leontocephalum Halácsy and propose a new nomenclatural combination under the generic name Pilosella.
Materials and methodsMorphological characters were noted from the authors' collection from Ilgaz mountains, Turkey and from herbarium specimens kept in B, BP, E, G-BOISS, KRAM, M, P, W, and WU. Several individuals from the Turkish accession were cultivated under glass in the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research in Sofia for further study and to obtain chromosome counts. Herbarium vouchers from specimens collected in the field were deposited in the herbarium of the Department of Biology at Karadeniz Technical University (KTUB); the herbarium of the Institute of Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research, Bulgarian Academy of Sciences (SOM); and the herbarium of the Natural History Museum, University of Copenhagen (C).The chromosome number was counted at the mitotic phase in the plants grown under glass in Sofia. Root tips were pretreated with colchicine solution (0.01%) for c. 90 min, then fixed in acetic alcohol (1:3) for at least 2 h at room temperature, hydrolyzed in 1 M HCl for 20 min at 60 °C, stained in Gomori's hematoxylin (Melander and Wingstrand, 1953) for 30 min at 60 °C, and finally, crushed in 45% acetic acid.
ResultsPilosella ilgazensis Vladimirov, Coşkunçelebi & Kit Tan, sp. nov. (Figure 1).