860810c Antennaria alpina subsp. porsildii (E. Ekman) Chmiel.
Distribution
Central Canada: Presence uncertain
Hudson Bay - Labrador: Presence uncertain
Western Greenland: Scattered
Eastern Greenland: Rare
Mid Arctic Tundra: Rare
Southern Arcti Tundra: Scattered
Shrub Tundra: Rare
Bordering boreal or alpine areas: Rare
- Chmiel., Rhodora 100: 63 (1998). - Antennaria porsildii E. Ekman, Svensk Bot. Tidskr. 21: 51 (1927). Holotype (C): Greenland: Danmarks Insel, ca. 7030'N, Aug. 1892, leg. Hartz. - Antennaria canescens subsp. porsildii (E. Ekman) Á. Löve & D. Löve, Bot. Not. 128: 519 (1976).
- ?Antennaria alpina var. glabrata J. Vahl, Fl. Dan. 16, 47: t. 2786, fig. 4 (1869). Lectotype (C): Greenland: Disco, leg. Vahl (Chmielewski 1998: 64). - ?Antennaria glabrata (J. Vahl) Greene, Pittonia 3: 285 (1898).
- ?Antennaria nitens Greene, Ottawa Naturalist 25: 42 (1911). Described from the mainland west of Hudson Bay in Nunavut (Canada).
2n=
(1) 56 (8x). - Greenland. - Dalgaard (1989, for A. glabrata).
(2) 63 (9x). - Europe (N), Greenland. - Nygren (1950a, for A. porsildii); Böcher and Larsen (1950, for A. glabrata, reassigned to A. porsildii by Jørgensen et al. 1958); Böcher and Larsen in Jørgensen et al. (1958, for A. porsildii).
(3) 70 (10x). - Europe (Norway). - Urbanska-Worytkiewicz (1967, 1974, three counts for A. porsildii).
Greenland Antennaria glabrata is then reported with 2n = 56, Greenland A. porsildii with 2n = 63, and Scandinavian A. porsildii with 2n = 63 and 70.
Geography: Amphi-Atlantic (W): CAN? GRL.
Notes: Male plants of subsp. porsildii are unknown; agamospermous. Subspecies porsildii is accepted from a fairly wide range in northern Scandinavia but does not reach the Arctic there. However, Chmielewski did not include European plants in this subspecies. This must mean that he excluded the Scandinavian plant from subsp. porsildii (he had much Scandinavian material on loan but refrained from annotating it). If so, it also implies that he excluded it from the A. alpina group, a conclusion which seems strange to us. We assign the Scandinavian plant to subsp. porsildii. Subspecies porsildii is considered one of the distinctly western arctic plants in northern Fennoscandia, i.e., assumed to have immigrated from the west across the Atlantic before, during, or just after the last glaciation (Gjærevoll 1990). It differs fairly well from subsp. alpina and subsp. canescens morphologically and also ecologically by being distinctly basiphilous and confined to late snowbeds.
The doubts about Canada concern A. glabrata which may be problematic to include in subsp. porsildii. The name A. glabrata was based on plants from western Greenland and such plants are frequent there, with very scattered localities reported from northeastern Canada and in some sources also reported from a small area in the Canadian Rockies (omitted by Chmielewski). Male plants are unknown. Antennaria glabrata is intermediate in some features between the A. alpina and A. monocephala aggregates and fairly distinct from the main body of subsp. porsildii in Greenland and Scandinavia. Its most obvious divergent features are one or very few and congested heads, leaves narrow (not spathulate), and lack of runners. The very few Baffin Island plants mapped as subsp. porsildii by Chmielewski (one collection in CAN) belong to this race and are generally more similar, in our opinion, to A. monocephala s. lat. than to A. alpina s. lat.
Higher Taxa
- Antennaria alpina [860810,species]