Panarctic Flora

343208 Puccinellia distans (Jacq.) Parl.

• Parl., Fl. Ital. 1: 367 (1850). - Poa distans Jacq., Observ. Bot. 1: 42 (1764). Lectotype (W): Austria: "crescit in fossis aquosis et locis humidis per Austriam" near Vienna, Herb. Jacquin fil. (Cope in Cafferty et al. 2000: 255). - Phippsia distans (Jacq.) Á. Löve & D. Löve, Folia Geobot. Phytotax. 10: 273 (1975).

2n= 42 (6x). - Europe, Russia, Canada. - Several reports.
Not included: There are many reports of tetraploids under the name Puccinellia distans but we exclude all of them as probably or certainly belonging to other species. Engelskjøn (1979) reported a diploid plant from northeastern Norway as P. aff. distans. This plant is a non-arctic, short rhizomatous, and very distinct species provisionally named as P. finmarchica (Elven et al. 2005) and probably belonging to the otherwise southern Eurasian sect. Xeratropis (V.I. Krecz.) Bor. Yan et al. (2000) reported another diploid plant under the name P. distans from China, and Probatova and Sokolovskaya (1984a) reported diploid, tetraploid, and hexaploid levels in Russian Far East plants. Most or all of these records may refer to other plants.

Geography: European - Asian (W): RUS* SIB*.

Notes: Puccinellia distans is recorded from the Arctic in northeastern European Russia (Polar Ural) and northwestern Siberia (Yamal-Gydan), as adventive but not fully confirmed as persisting.

The collective view of this species by Hughes and Halliday (1980) - including also P. capillaris and P. hauptiana - was argued for by the limits between these plants not being very clear. In our opinion, the two main northern European taxa, P. distans s. str. and the non-arctic P. capillaris, are consistently separable. Fertile transitional forms are unknown and hybrids are pollen and fruit sterile (Hylander 1953b: 267).

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  Source: Fabelfroh at Wikispecies