343203 Puccinellia phryganodes (Trin.) Scribn. & Merr.
- Scribn. & Merr., Contr. U.S. Natl. Herb. 13: 78 (1910). - Poa phryganodes Trin., Mém. Acad. Imp. Sci. St.-Pétersbourg, sér. 6, Sci. Math. 1: 389 (1831). Holotype (LE TRIN-2773.04!): Alaska: "Kotzebue-Sund", leg. Eschscholtz 46. - Phippsia phryganodes (Trin.) Á. Löve & D. Löve, Bot. Not. 128: 500 (1976).
Geography: Circumpolar.
Notes: Sørensen (1953) identified morphological differences in inflorescence and microscopic ones in leaf epidermis among four races with different geographic patterns within the stoloniferous and widespread arctic seashore Puccinellia phryganodes. He treated the races informally as "Beringian", "Greenland", "Siberian", and "Spitzbergen-Novaya Zemlya types", but he stated: "If any nomenclatorial consequences were to be drawn from the present investigation, it would be to ascribe subspecific rank to each and all of the four distinguished types". Löve and Löve (1976a) raised those of Sørensen's "types" that differed in ploidy level to rank of species within Phippsia, the diploid as Phippsia phryganodes (but see Puccinellia geniculata above), the triploid as Phippsia neoarctica, and the tetraploid as Phippsia vilfoidea. Sørensen's "types" are morphologically similar and without any identified diploid relatives (perhaps except for P. geniculata). Taxonomic autopolyploidy is therefore suspected. They are allopatric or parapatric, replace each other around the Polar Sea, and we provisionally accept them as subspecies as proposed by Sørensen. Davis and Consaul (2007) did not accept races, comment on the morphological variation, or comment on sexuality vs. vegetative spread.