Panarctic Flora

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370108-10 The Papaver alaskanum aggregate P. alaskanum, P. macounii, P. mcconnellii

Geography: American Beringian.

Notes: Authors concerned with northwestern North America have treated the following taxa as three species: Papaver alaskanum described from the Aleutian Islands, P. mcconnellii described from the northwestern mainland Northwest Territories, and P. macounii described from the Pribilof Islands (Hultén 1968a; Kiger and Murray 1997). They are parts of an unresolved and possibly large group of species. The morphological differences are rather pronounced and often structured geographically. The only common feature we have observed is the tough basal covering of marcescent sheaths. It is usually much more easy to say from which part of Alaska or the Yukon Territory a plant comes from than what species it belongs to. About 20 populations have been studied by AFLPs. However, the majority belong to northern Alaskan and Yukon P. mcconnellii, and only a few come from the southern and western parts where the variation is larger. The populations constitute a distinct cluster in the analyses with little internal structure (Solstad 2009).

Higher Taxa