Panarctic Flora

370133 Papaver hultenii Knaben

• Knaben, Opera Bot. 3, 3: 49 (1959). Holotype (O!): Canada: Nunavut, Copper Mine River, leg. M. Hammer, plants cultivated in Oslo from seeds collected in 1948.

2n= (1) 42 (6x). - Alaska (N), Canada (NW). - Knaben (1959a, two localities). Hexaploid in FCM, Solstad (2009, five plants from four localities).
(2) 7x 8x. - Alaska (N). - (Hepta to) octoploid in FCM, Solstad (2009, twelve plants from seven localities).
FCM hexaploids are documented from the Alaskan Arctic Coast (Barrow), the Arctic Slope (Atqasuk), the Brooks Range, and the Noatak River valley. Two other reports of hexaploids from northern Alaska may belong to this species as it is the predominant one in the regions where the material was collected: Johnson and Packer (1968, Ogotoruk Creek in northwestern Alaska), and Packer and McPherson (1974, the Barrow area). FCM (hepta to) octoploids are documented from the Alaskan Arctic Coast (Prudhoe Bay), the Brooks Range, the Noatak River valley, and the Alaskan west coast.

Geography: Amphi-Beringian? - North American (NW): RFE? ALA CAN.

Notes: Our data suggest that Papaver hultenii is a major plant of northwestern North America, encompassing the larger part of the records from this region assigned to P. lapponicum and/or P. radicatum (e.g., Cody 1996; Kiger and Murray 1997). Knaben (1959b) described the new species P. hultenii due to its morphology and its hexaploid chromosome number, differing from the two species she compared with: the octoploid P. lapponicum s. lat. and the tetraploid P. macounii s. str. She had material available from two localities only: Copper Mine River in mainland Nunavut (the type locality which she erroneously assumed to be in Alaska) and Lake Noluk in northern Alaska. Plants corresponding to Knaben's description, but at two ploidy levels, are very widespread in northwestern and northern Alaska as a variable group in the analyses of the AFLP data and morphology (Solstad 2009). Corresponding plants are present in the northern Yukon Territory, the northern mainland and island Northwest Territories, and the northwestern mainland Nunavut. Russian authors (e.g., Petrovsky 1999) report P. hultenii from Chukotka and suggest affinity with P. lapponicum s. lat. The AFLP analysis does not support a close affinity between P. hultenii and P. lapponicum but instead assigns P. hultenii within a large and predominantly amphi-Beringian cluster of taxa.

In the AFLP analysis, P. hultenii splits on two clusters, one with hexaploids and one with octoploids, suggesting that they differ in their genomic composition (Solstad 2009). The two groups have not yet been closely compared morphologically.