800401-02 The Plantago major aggregate P. depressa, P. major
Geography: Circumboreal.
Notes: Plantago major s. lat. is adventive in the Arctic, also in Russia (Sekretareva 1999), but is established in many places. We assign all adventive plants from the northern parts of Europe and North America to subsp. major even if the northwestern North American plant differs in some features from the European one. The North American plant has more erect leaves with blade often with basal lobes and tapering into the petiole. Hultén (1968a) assigned it to var. pilgeri Domin. That name is based on a proposal by Pilger for plants from the Czech Republic and is most probably misapplied in northwestern North America, also indicated by Pilger himself who (erroneously) annotated Alaskan specimens (in S) as P. depressa. Subsequently, Hultén (1971a) and Hultén and Fries (1986) named this plant P. asiatica but that name is probably also misapplied as it seems to belong to a much more southern Asian plant. Pilger considered P. depressa and P. asiatica different species.
Higher Taxa
- Plantago [8004,genus]