| Rhinanthus minor subsp. borealis (Sterneck) P.D. Sell | |
| Publ. & Syn. | P.D. Sell, Watsonia 6: 300 (1967). - Alectorolophus borealis Sterneck, Annuaire Conserv. Jard. Bot. Genève 3: 25 (1889). Type: Alaska: the Aleutian Islands, Unalaska, leg. Fischer. - Rhinanthus borealis (Sterneck) Druce, Ann. Scott. Nat. Hist. 1901: 178 (1901). |
| Notes | Subspecies borealis is morphologically uniform in coastal and interior Alaska. We recognize this subspecies as a Pacific race. However, a reported diagnostic character (calyx pubescence) appears in northeastern Canadian and Greenlandic plants and partly in Nordic and British ones. Sell (1967) published the combination R. minor subsp. borealis (Sterneck) P.D. Sell, accepting this as a British plant but unaware that the same combination was published previously by Löve (1950: 52). Löve's combination is without sufficient basionym citation and we consider Sell's combination as the first validly published one. Even if we exclude the European, the Greenlandic, and the northeastern North American plants from subsp. borealis, there are doubts about where in Canada the limit between subsp. borealis and subsp. groenlandicus runs. |
| Chromosomes | 14 14+8B (2x). - Europe (N, C), Canada, U.S.A. (NE), Greenland. - Numerous reports for "borealis", "groenlandicus", and "minor". Witsch (1950) stated B-chromosomes to be a constant part of the genome of Rhinanthus (as Alectorolophus). The many reports of 2n = 22 then represent a set with 2n = 14 plus 8 B-chromosomes. Whether the northwestern North American plants reported with 2n = 14 represent plants without B-chromosomes, or plants where the B-chromosomes have not been counted, is not known. Taylor and Mulligan (1968), however, stated regular meiosis without B-chromosomes in 2n = 14 "borealis" from British Columbia. If so, the absence of B-chromosomes is a difference of Pacific vs. Atlantic (European) plants. |
| Geography | American Pacific: ALA CAN? |
| Distribution | N = F E = R HL = ? AW = r [ key ] |
| Parent taxon | Rhinanthus minor L. |
| PAF ID | 810601c |