710112 Primula cuneifolia Ledeb.
- Ledeb., Mém. Acad. Imp. Sci. St. Pétersbourg Hist. Acad. 5: 522 (1815). Holotype (LE)?: Siberia: "in Sibiria transbaicalensis", leg. Tilesius.
2n=
22 (2x). - Far East (N), Alaska. - Sokolovskaya (1965, 1968); Kelso (1991b). Reports for subsp. cuneifolia.
Geography: Asian (E) - Asian Pacific - amphi-Beringian.
Notes: Kelso: Hultén (1968a) accepted two subspecies to reach the Arctic: a mainly northeastern Asian subsp. cuneifolia, on the American side only reported from the Aleutian Islands and the Tuksuk Lagoon on the Seward Peninsula, and a mainly North American subsp. saxifragifolia. I currently regard this as two subspecies: subsp. cuneifolia as heterostylous, occurring in Japan, southeastern Siberia, Kamtschatka, and only the outermost Aleutian Islands of Attu and Agattu, and subsp. saxifragifolia as homostylous, occurring throughout the rest of Alaska and in Canada. See also Kelso (1991b).
This character homostyly vs. heterostyly is very consistent, so material previously referred by Hultén as subsp. cuneifolia from the Seward Peninsula is not that. It is an unusually robust form of subsp. saxifragifolia. Hultén did not know about the heterostyly vs. homostyly distinction and used only vegetative characters, primarily size and robustness of the plants as the difference between the two. He was mostly right, but not entirely, in his assignment to subspecies. There is some size overlap, or at least can be if subsp. saxifragifolia is growing in benign conditions (though it usually is smaller). So, unlike the situation in Primula tschuktschorum and P. pumila, I prefer to keep these at the subspecies level. Most or all the arctic references would then be to P. cuneifolia subsp. saxifragifolia (Alaska and probably Chukotka as well as it occurs on the islands in the Bering Strait).