| Ranunculus auricomus L. s. lat. | |
| Publ. & Syn. | L., Sp. Pl.: 551 (1753). Lectotype (BM-000628885): Europe. Herb. Clifford: 229, Ranunculus 8 (Benson 1954: 354). |
| Notes | The plants of the Ranunculus auricomus group in Iceland have been studied and are assumed to belong to a single agamospecies: R. islandicus (Fagerström and Kvist 1980b; Ericsson 1992, 2001). All known Greenland and Svalbard populations have been studied. In Svalbard, only one stand of R. auricomus s. lat. is known, named as R. wilanderi. Each of the very few populations or population groups known from eastern Greenland have received its own name - R. boecheri, R. hartzii, R. glabratus - the last-mentioned also present in Vaigach and Novaya Zemlya in northern European Russia (and described from Novaya Zemlya). The situation in Fennoscandia and in the major parts of European Russia differs. Up to the year 2001, a total of 605 species or subspecies in Ranunculus auricomus s. lat. (all four clades) had been described from the mainland Nordic countries, mainly from Sweden and Finland (Ericsson 2001). The mainland Norwegian and European Russian taxa have not been investigated in a similar way, which means that with few exceptions we have no treatment of the (very likely) several agamospecies that reach the Arctic there. A diploid chromosome number for R. boecheri (2n = 16, Böcher 1938a) suggests that this species may be sexual. The ecology reported for the type ("by a waterfall in moss mire and very wet heath") suggests that it should be compared with the Svalbard R. wilanderi, growing in a similar but for the R. auricomus group unusual site. All the named taxa from the arctic islands and Greenland belong to the R. "auricomus" grade and are entered informally together with a few taxa from the European mainland. |
| Chromosomes | (1) 16 (2x), (2) 24 (3x), (3) 32 (4x), (4) 40 (5x), (5) 48 (6x), (6) 56 (7x), (7) 64 (8x). See Jalas and Suominen (1989) for references. The most frequent number in northern Europe is 2n = 32. |
| Geography | Amphi-Atlantic (E) - European - Asian (W): ICE NOR RUS SIB GRL. |
| Distribution | N = R C = R D = R Ic = r E = S FN = s UN = s GE = r SF = r Tm = r [ key ] |
| Parent taxon | Ranunculus L. |
| PAF ID | 361222 |