Panarctic Flora

440107 Claytonia scammaniana Hultén

• Hultén, Bot. Not. 1939: 826 (1939). Holotype (GH): Alaska: "Mt Porcupine Dome, about 12 mi from Miller House, Steese Highway", 12. July 1937, leg. E. Scamman 749. - Montia scammaniana (Hultén) S.L. Welsh, Great Basin Naturalist 28: 154 (1968).
• ?Claytonia porsildii Jurtz., Bot. Zhurn. 66: 1043 (1981). Holotype (CAN): Canada: the Yukon Territory, the Ogilvie Mountains, mountain east of mile 50-54 on Dempster Highway, 5800' a.s., 15. Aug. 1966, leg. R.T. Porsild B447.
• ?Claytonia arctica sensu Porsild (1975), non Adams (1817).

2n= (1) 10. - Alaska, Canada (NW). - Mulligan and Porsild (1969b for C. arctica, by Yurtsev for C. porsildii, see notes); Dawe (unpubl., 2n = ca. 10).
(2) 16. - Alaska. - Davis and Bowmer (1966, for C. scammaniana).

Geography: American Beringian: ALA CAN.

Notes: Murray and Elven: Hultén (1968a) mapped Claytonia scammaniana from the Borderline Arctic in the southwestern Kuskokwim Mountains. It has subsequently been found in several localities, partly arctic ones, in western Alaska. If also Yurtsev's C. porsildii is included, it reaches the Arctic in northern Alaska and in the British Mountains in the northern Yukon Territory.

Porsild (1975) reported a plant from the Ogilvie Mountains in the Yukon Territory as C. arctica (without comparing with C. scammaniana), published a good photo, and Mulligan and Porsild (1969b) reported its chromosome number to be 2n = 10. Yurtsev (1981) correctly found this plant to differ significantly from Asian C. arctica. He gave it the new name C. porsildii Jurtz. (also he without reference to C. scammaniana), and he specified as holotype the specimen illustrated by Porsild. He correctly concluded that the majority of previous Alaskan records under the name C. arctica belong to this new species.

We agree with Yurtsev that this plant differs at species level from C. arctica. It has been collected repeatedly in arctic or near arctic localities in northern and northwestern Alaska in later years (ALA, O). However, we are in some doubts whether the plant illustrated by Porsild and renamed by Yurtsev as C. porsildii can be kept apart from C. scammaniana. Miller (2003) and Miller and Chambers (2006) synonymized Yurtsev's C. porsildii with C. scammaniana. The majority of the northern and northwestern Alaskan plants differ in less branched or unbranched rhizome and larger flowers but we are not sure whether the differences from C. scammaniana in central and eastern Alaska and the Yukon Territory are discontinuous. The matter deserves a closer study.