Panarctic Flora

860810a Antennaria alpina subsp. alpina

• ?Antennaria lapponica Selander, Acta Phytogeogr. Suec. 28: 16 (1950). Syntypes (S): Sweden: Lule lappmark, "in monte Tjårgesvarre et montibus adjacentibus", July 1946, leg. S. Selander.

2n= (1) 70 (10x). - Europe (Norway). - Urbanska-Worytkiewicz (1967, 1970, 15 counts).
(2) 84 84-85 (12x). - Europe (N). - Nygren (1950a); Urbanska-Worytkiewicz (1967).
There are no information in Urbanska-Worytkiewicz (1967) about the sexes of the plants investigated.

Geography: European (N): NOR RUS.

Notes: The leaves of northern European Antennaria alpina s. str. are either hairy on both surfaces, mostly densely so, or with a glabrous to subglabrous upper surface. This variation does not seem to have much taxonomic significance. Bayer's (2006: 415) note is therefore enigmatic: "The basal leaves vary from glabrous, as in the type material, to pubescent". We have not inspected the Linnaean type. Northern European plants basal leaves glabrous (on both surfaces) are otherwise assigned to subsp. porsildii and it is unlikely that Linnaeus had access to any material belonging to that taxon.

The data are still insufficient for deciding whether A. alpina s. str. is agamospermous or mixed sexual and agamospermous. Fennoscandian mountain plants vary in sex ratio. Whereas populations with only females predominate, several populations with males and females in almost equal frequencies are found in both southern and northern Fennoscandia. Selander (1950) described these as A. lapponica, i.e., as a species apart from A. alpina. His descripion was based both on the presence of both sexes and on several but rather vague morphological characters as compared with A. alpina s. str., e.g.: more low-grown, stems densely white-lanate, stem leaves narrower and more acuminate, the uppermost reaching or nearly reaching the capitulae, capitulae more congested, and involucral bracts darker and sometimes with reddish spots. Subsequent investigators (see Gjærevoll 1990) report reduced pollen fertility in the males and assume agamospermy also in these populations but this needs confirmation as no exact data have been presented. Finnish and Swedish authors (Hämet-Ahti et al. 1998; Aronsson in comment) have recently assigned the bisexual populations to A. canescens, otherwise recognized as an American, Greenlandic, and Icelandic part of the A. alpina complex. The ploidy level(s) of these plants are unknown but fairly numerous Norwegian chromosome counts of A. alpina (see Engelskjøn 1979) indicate uniformly high numbers of 2n = 70-84 (10-12x). Chmielewski (1998) suggested the male plants to be misidentified A. dioica. After inspecting numerous Norwegian specimens (O) in 2004, we disagree. They belong within or close to A. alpina and differ from A. dioica in all relevant morphological respects. They are also a less polymorphic sample than the plants from purely female populations, indicating that the bisexual condition (possible sexuality) is found in a morphologically perhaps identifiable part of the Fennoscandian A. alpina. We may have to revive Selander's A. lapponica.