6728 Cakile Mill.
- Mill., Gard. Dict. Abr., ed. 4: 236 (1754).
Notes: Cakile reaches the Arctic in northwestern Europe and in Greenland. The Löves assigned the plants in Iceland and northern Norway to the North American C. edentula as a subsp. islandica. This was based on morphology and on their assumption that C. edentula was tetraploid, as they found for Icelandic plants (Löve and Löve 1947), whereas the European C. maritima was diploid. Later, both Icelandic and all other plants of Cakile (American, European, Asian, and adventive elsewhere) have proved to be diploid (Rodman 1974) but some somatic endopolyploidy may occur in single root tips (Gjelsås 1970). Gorenflot (1970) found only diploids on the Icelandic shores where the Löves reported only tetraploids. The Löves must either have manipulated their data to fit their hypothesis, or the Icelandic population of Cakile must have undergone a massive haploidization in the 30 years between the two investigations. We favour the first hypothesis.
Rodman (1974) convincingly documented that the northwestern European plants, including the Icelandic and Norwegian ones, were more closely related to C. maritima than to C. edentula. They are currently recognized as C. maritima subsp. islandica, also including C. arctica and C. lapponica described from Russia.
Higher Taxa
- Brassicaceae [67,family]