Convolvulus nitidus Boiss., from the Balkan PeninsulaAuthor(s): W. B. TurrillSource: New Phytologist, Vol. 22, No. 2 (May 19, 1923), pp. 95-96Published by: Wiley on behalf of the New Phytologist TrustStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2427655 .

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1 95 ]

CONVOLVULLIS NITIDUS BOISS., FROM THE BALKAN PENINSULA

BY W. B. TURRILL, M.Sc. Royal Gardens, Kew

JT iS well known that a considerable number of plants are common to the Iberian and Balkan Peninsulas but have not been found in

Italy. This is usually, and probably correctly, explained on the basis of the geological history of the countries of the Mediterranean Basin. In the centre of both Spain and the Balkan Peninsula there is a considerable area of ancient land which has probably never been submerged entirely, at any one time, since, at least, the beginning of the Tertiary epoch. Italy, on the other hand, is geologically a young country and owes most of its land surface to foldings and elevations which took place in Miocene and Pliocene times. Hence, it is reasonably concluded that those species of plants which occur in the Iberian and Balkan Peninsulas but miss Italy attained their wide east and west distribution before the Italian peninsula, as we now know it, was formed. Additions to the number of species having the type of distribution just outlined naturally excite considerable interest and the discovery of a species of Convolvulus, hitherto known only from Spain, in the mountains of the Balkan Peninsula, is decidedly worthy of record.

Dr N. Stoianoff, Professor of Botany in the Faculty of Agriculture, Sofia University, sent to Kew specimens of a Convolvulus under the provisional name of C. cochlearis, the specimens having been collected by him in Mt Ali-Botusch. They have been definitely determined by the present writer as Convolvulus nitidus Boiss. This species was first described by Boissier, in his Voyage botanique dans le midi de l'Espagne, 2, 4I7 (I839-i847), from specimens collected "in argillosis calcareis aridissimis regionis alpinae, Sierra Nevada ad Trevenque supra San Geronimo, Domajo, Aguilones de Dilar. Alt. 6300'-7000'. Fl. Jul." The plant appears to be fairly common in the Sierra Nevada and there are also specimens in the Kew Herbarium from the Sierra del Mana and the Sierra de Segura, both in the south of Spain not far distant from the Sierra Nevada. In Vol. i, at Table CXXII, of the work cited above, Boissier gives an excellent coloured representation of the plant, accompanied by analyses of the flower.

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96 W. B. TURRILL

A morphologically very closely related species is Convolvutlus coch- learis Griseb., originally described (Spic. Fl. Rumel. 2, 76, I844) from Eastern Anatolia (legit Donietti). A type-specimen has not been seen by the writer but there seems no doubt from the description that the Greek plants referred to this species by Boissier (Fl. Or. 4, 98) and by Halacsy (Consp. Fl. Gr. 2, 306) are specifically identical with it. The name Convolvulus parnassicus was given by Boissier and Orphanides (Diagn. Ser. 2, 3, I25) to the Greek plant, but later this name was reduced by Boissier to a synonym of C. cochlearis Griseb. While the majority of specimens from Spain of C. nitidus can be easily separated from the Anatolian and Greek C. cochlearis by the less compact habit, often longer flowering branches, and larger and longer and less spathulate leaves, there is no doubt that the two are very similar in morphological characters and are presumably closely related phylogenetically. Indeed, part of the material distributed under No. 339 Huter, Porta and Rigo, ex itinere hsispanico I870, from Mt Dornajo, Sierra Nevada, can scarcely be distinguished from Greek specimens of C. coclilearis. In any case the Ali-Botusch plant is certainly C. nitidus Boiss. and not C. cochlearis Griseb., whether this latter be regarded as a species distinct from the former or as only a variety of it.

Mt Ali-Botusch, which has yielded many interesting plants to the researches of Prof. Stoianoff, may be regarded as an outlier to the south-west of the great Rhodope massif, itself the home of numerous rare species of plants. The specimens of Convolvulus nitidus from the mountain and referred to in this note were collected on July ioth, I920, between i8oo and 2000 m. altitude, on limestone rocks.

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