Oreomecon Banfi, Bartolucci

Elvebakk, Arve & Bjerke, Jarle W., 2024, Papaver recircumscribed: A review of neighbouring Papaveraceae genera, including Afropapaver nom. et stat. nov. and Oreomecon, a large, Arctic-Alpine genus, PhytoKeys 248, pp. 105-188 : 105-188

3. Oreomecon Banfi, Bartolucci , J.- M. Tison & Galasso, Nat. Hist. Sci. 9 (1): 68. 2021

Type species.

Papaver alpinum L., Sp. Pl. 507. 1753.

Notes.

When this genus was introduced by Banfi et al. (2022), the relationship between the basionym and the new name was not designated by adding the expected information “ nom. et stat. nov. ”. However, according to the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi and plants (Shenzhen Code), this is a recommendation (Rec. 32 A; Turland et al. (2018)) and not a requirement and the lack of this information does not affect the validity of the new genus. The species belonging to the recently described genus Oreomecon are treated here according to their distributions within eight geographical areas (see groups A – H below). Within each area, in cases where our interpretations deviate from the cited reference studies, they are discussed and used as a basis for the conclusive list of accepted species.

Overall, this treatment shows that Oreomecon contains 68 species and 29 subspecies. Only O. lapponica and O. nudicaulis are listed from more than one of the geographical areas defined above, however, with different subspecies. In the geography-based enumeration of species, only areas where the nominate subspecies occur are included. A total of 38 Oreomecon names are newly introduced below, 29 as recombinations and nine as nomenclatural novelties, whereas 21 existing Oreomecon names are put into synonymy.

Phylogeny of Oreomecon .

All ITS sequences found in the GenBank of taxa belonging to Oreomecon and some unpublished data were used to construct a state-of-the-art phylogram shown in the supporting document (Suppl. material 1). It is already known that this marker does not discriminate between closely-related taxa such as those of the Oreomecon alpina complex ( Schönswetter et al. 2009). However, with this analysis, we wanted to check whether any major clades appeared within the genus. We found that the sequences included several misidentifications and that it was impossible to trace information on the origin of many of the samples. Our own alternative interpretations of the identities of most of the samples are, therefore, shown as a right-hand column in the figure.

Four clades were identified, although they should be interpreted with care. In branch I, three samples of O. alpina s. lat. are widely different from other samples. Branch IV probably includes cultivated material of “ Iceland Poppy ”, most commonly interpreted as O. crocea ( Elven et al. 2011) . In contrast, the single sample in Branch II might represent true O. nudicaulis , as it was labelled P. nudicaule subsp. nudicaule by Carolan et al. (2006). The most exciting result from the present phylogram was the concentration of taxa from Far East Asia in Branch III, although several samples remain uninterpreted.