Panarctic Flora

370135b Papaver lapponicum subsp. occidentale (C.E. Lundstr.) Knaben

• Knaben, Opera Bot. 2, 3: 413 (1959). - Papaver radicatum subsp. occidentale C.E. Lundstr., Acta Horti Berg. 7, 5: 413 (1923). Lectotype (S 07-10363!): Greenland: "Groenlandia orientalis", Sabine Island, 10. July 1899, leg P. Dusén (Elven et al. 2009: 987).
• ?Papaver lapponicum subsp. porsildii Knaben, Blyttia 16: 79 (1958). Holotype (CAN!): Canada: Nunavut, "Middle Territories, Foxe Basin, Prince Charles Island", leg. A.E. Porsild.

2n= 56 (8x). - Canada (NW, NE), Greenland (NW, NE). - Knaben (1959a, 1959b, partly as P. lapponicum subsp. porsildii). Octoploid in FCM, Solstad (2009, 13 plants from four localities).

Geography: North American (N): CAN GRL.

Notes: We consider subsp. occidentale to be the major part of Papaver lapponicum in the western Arctic. Samples from the northern Banks, Melville, Prince Patrick, and the northern Baffin Island in the Canadian Arctic and from northwestern, northern, and northeastern Greenland join as one cluster in the AFLP analysis. Several of the sampled plants had been identified in the field as P. dahlianum, demonstrating that subsp. occidentale differs morphologically from subsp. lapponicum. This is evident also from Lundström's (1923) original illustration of subsp. occidentale and from the designated type. Distinguishing characters are given by Solstad (2009). Subspecies occidentale is the major Greenlandic and perhaps the only Canadian race of P. lapponicum.

Knaben (1959a, 1959b) crossed Norwegian P. lapponicum subsp. lapponicum and Greenland plants she assigned to subsp. occidentale. Plants resulting from these crosses had ca. 90% pollen fertility (the same level as between the two neighbouring Norwegian populations of subsp. lapponicum) and ca. 50% good seed (the same level as between many crosses between Norwegian races of P. radicatum). These levels of presumed fertility indicate that the plants Knaben analysed under the name subsp. occidentale from eastern Greenland belong instead to subsp. lapponicum, which she was not aware of as present in Greenland.

Subspecies porsildii may be an artificial entity (Petrovsky in comment). Knaben's (1959b) very scant crossing experiments with this race involved plants from the type area and crosses with her P. lapponicum subsp. labradoricum and what she called an 'intermediate type' from Greenland, both within her concept of P. lapponicum. Both crosses gave fairly low pollen and seed fertility, at the level of crosses between species elsewhere in her experiments. This supports the distinctness of P. labradoricum but does not clarify subsp. porsildii. As all our Canadian samples of P. lapponicum are assigned to one cluster in the AFLP analysis, and as we have found no morphological disjunctions in the major Canadian material (CAN, DAO), we provisionally synonymize Knaben's subsp. porsildii with subsp. occidentale.