| Antennaria alpina subsp. canescens (Lange) Chmiel. | |
| Publ. & Syn. | Antennaria canescens var. pseudoporsildii Böcher, Meddel. Grønland 148, 3: 32 (1963). Holotype (C): Greenland: Kangerdluarssuk Ikamiut, 6548'N, 1958, leg. T.W. Böcher 270. - Antennaria boecheriana A.E. Porsild, Bot. Tidsskr. 61: 36 (1965). Nomen novum for Antennaria canescens var. pseudoporsildii. - Antennaria canescens subsp. boecheriana (A.E. Porsild) Á. Löve, Taxon 19: 301 (1970). |
| Notes | For doubts about the Russian Far East, see below (Antennaria atriceps). Chmielewski (1998) included northern European, Greenlandic, Canadian, and Alaskan plants in his concept of subsp. canescens. We Europeans feel need for a more extensive comparison between the European plants and the North American ones before we accept the presence of two 'hairy' races - subsp. alpina and subsp. canescens - in Scandinavia. For the Checklist, we accept subsp. canescens from Iceland but regard all Scandinavian plants as subsp. alpina. Some comments on the names and proposed taxa included in the synonymy: Antennaria canescens in a restricted meaning is confined to Iceland, Greenland, and northeastern Canada. Male plants are unknown. Authors have reported this plant also from northern Fennoscandia (Löve 1970a; Hämet-Ahti et al. 1998), but in this area some recent investigators have considered A. canescens to be the plant with mixed sexes in the populations, whereas A. alpina s. str. is the purely female agamospermous. Opinions obviously differ. Antennaria sornborgeri (including A. brevistyla) was reported with an interrupted range in eastern and western Greenland and in northeastern Canada. Male plants are unknown. Antennaria atriceps was regarded by Hultén (1968b) as possibly the westernmost part of the A. alpina group, known from a very few and scattered Cordilleran localities. Petrovsky (1987c) reported it from several localities in Chukotka and rather indicated an affinity to the A. monocephala group. The identity of the Russian plants should be confirmed before subsp. canescens is accepted from northeastern Asia. Antennaria subcanescens has been suggested to be part of the A. friesiana aggregate but was assigned to the A. alpina group by both Chmielewski (1998) and Bayer (2006). Male plants are unknown. The range reported by Porsild and Cody (1980) is strange and not consistent: a few very scattered localities in eastern and western Greenland, southern Baffin Island, and along the Arctic Coast west to Point Hope north of the Bering Strait. Petrovsky indicated (in comments) an affinity or possibly synonymy between his A. friesiana subsp. beringensis and this plant. Antennaria boecheriana is reported with scattered localities in southwestern, southern, and southeastern Greenland. Male plants are unknown. Löve (1970a) reported a chromosome count of 2n = 56 (8x) for this plant from Iceland. This is a secondary report in a Flora, without any primary documentation. |
| Chromosomes | (1) 56 (8x). - Europe (Iceland), North America, Greenland. - At least five reports for A. atriceps and A. boecheriana. (2) 84 (12x). - Europe (Iceland). - Löve and Löve (1956b). |
| Geography | Amphi-Beringian (E)? - North American - amphi-Atlantic (W): ICE RFE? ALA CAN GRL. |
| Distribution | N = S AN = r C = ? GW = f D = F Ic = f E = F CC = r HL = s CE = ? CS = ? AW = r GE = f [ key ] |
| Parent taxon | Antennaria alpina (L.) Gaertn. |
| PAF ID | 860810b |