| Silene involucrata subsp. involucrata | |
| Publ. & Syn. | Silene involucrata subsp. tenella auct., non (Tolm.) Bocquet (1967). |
| Notes | Elven, Murray, and Petrovsky: We consider subsp. involucrata to be the main race in the boreal and low arctic parts of Siberia and the Russian Far East and extending to northeastern European Russia and northwestern North America. The epithet "tenella" has commonly been applied to it in northeastern Asia and North America (as late as by Morton 2005c), erroneously so in Tzvelev's and our opinions (see below). Four other names are proposed synonymized with subsp. involucrata and we have inspected the types of these: (a) Gastrolychnis angustiflora. - Tzvelev stated (and we concur) that the type belongs to this main Siberian plant even if the more frequent plant in Kolguev is his G. affinis (our S. involucrata subsp. tenella). The name has until recently been erroneously applied (e.g., Elven 1994; Hämet-Ahti et al. 1998) to the northern Fennoscandian and European Russian plant which we now consider to be subsp. tenella. (b) Lychnis pauciflora. - This is the priority name for the species in Gastrolychnis (Tzvelev 2000b) but it is inapplicable in Silene due to the earlier S. pauciflora Ucria 1796. We agree that the type belongs to Silene involucrata subsp. involucrata. (c) Melandrium taimyrense. - This name has not been in any practical use on the Russian side since its original description (except for Czerepanov 1981). The type (the only Russian specimen named as such) belongs without much doubt to S. involucrata subsp. involucrata. However, this name has been widely and erroneously used on the American side for one of the small-seeded plants, S. ostenfeldii. Morton (2005c) synonymized "taimyrense" with subsp. tenella, i.e., with subsp. involucrata in our system. (d) Lychnis taylorae. - The name "taylorae" has been applied to a more tall-grown and slender plant than the main Siberian plant. It has been synonymized with "tenella" in North America (see Cody 1996; Morton 2005c), i.e., with our subsp. involucrata. Inspection of the type (by Murray) confirms this assignment. As for chromosome numbers, Löve and Löve (1975a) considered their Gastrolychnis involucrata subsp. involucrata to be tetraploid and their G. affinis to be diploid. They sorted previous chromosome number reports accordingly and their lists are therefore pretty useless. The three reports of diploids which they listed - Löve (1954b North America), Sokolovskaya and Strelkova (1960 northern Yakutia), and Bocquet and Favarger (1971 Canada) - probably belong to S. uralensis s. lat. |
| Chromosomes | 48 (4x). - Siberia (N), Far East (N), Alaska, Canada (NW). - Numerous reports, partly for "taylorae" or "tenella". |
| Geography | European (NE) - Asian (N) - amphi-Beringian: RUS SIB RFE ALA CAN. |
| Distribution | N = S AN = s AO = r C = ? D = S E = S CC = r WI = ? YG = ? HL = r CE = ? CS = ? UN = r YK = ? AW = s Kh = r CW = ? Tm = r KP = r [ key ] |
| Parent taxon | Silene involucrata (Cham. & Schltdl.) Bocquet |
| PAF ID | 421216a |