| Gentianopsis richardsonii (A.E. Porsild) | |
| Publ. & Syn. | Gentiana richardsonii A.E. Porsild, Bull. Natl. Mus. Canada 121: 274 (1951). Holotype (DAO): Canada: the Northwest Territories, "Arctic Coast east of the Mackenzie Delta, about latitude 70N and 13120'W, on a dry, sandy slope 8 miles from the coast", 01.-03. Aug. 1927, leg. A.E. Porsild and R.T. Porsild 2653. |
| Notes | Plants similar to Gentianopsis detonsa occur in a few seashore localities at Kotzebue Sound in western Alaska and between the Mackenzie River Delta and Liverpool Bay in northwestern Canada (Porsild 1951). Even if the arctic seashores are under-investigated, this spectacular plant should have been found much more often if it has a more continuous range. The plants from northwestern North America differ in a few characters and are strongly disjunct geographically from the North Atlantic plants. They have been described as Gentiana richardsonii and might deserve rank as a species or perhaps better a subspecies. As far as we know, the name richardsonii has not yet been recombined in Gentianopsis. |
| Chromosomes | (1) 44 (4x, x = 11). - Europe (Iceland). - D. Löve (1953); Löve and Löve (1956b). (2) 78 (6x, x = 13). - Europe (Iceland). - Löve (1983b); Löve and Löve (1986a). The chromosomal information is ambiguous. Löve and Löve (1975a) stated the base number in Gentianopsis to be x = 11 and the number in this species to be 2n = 44 and tetraploid, based on two counts from Iceland. Subsequent works, also by the Löves, have rather indicated x = 13, and for northern material the hexaploid number of 2n = 78, in both G. detonsa and G. barbata (see below). The difference is rather large. None of the two reported numbers have been confirmed by any independent source we are aware of. We are tempted to reject the earlier reports of 2n = 44. Not included: A report of 2n = 26 for a plant named in the publication (Vasudevan 1975) as G. detonsa from the western Himalayas. Gentianopsis detonsa should not occur in the Himalayas, whereas many other species of the genus do. The report, however, gives support to x = 13 as the base number of this genus. |
| Geography | American Beringian: ALA CAN. |
| Distribution | N = R E = R CC = r AW = r [ key ] |
| Parent taxon | Gentianopsis Ma |
| PAF ID | 760402 |