Numerical Analyses of Wild Jurinea Spp. (asteraceae) in Turkey

Eighteen taxa of the genus Jurinea Cass. growing naturally in Turkey were classified by numerical taxonomic analysis. Morphological and palynological characters of each individual were measured and quantified on the basis of 51 traits. Ten plants were chosen randomly for the measurements of metric characters related to the external morphology of the taxa and the average values used for statistical analysis via NTSYS-pc package. Standardized data were used to generate the dendrogram that revealed the phenetic relationships of the taxa. Geographic distribution pattern of the Jurinea species appear to be closely related to the Anatolian Diagonal. Introduction Asteraceae is one of the largest Angiosperm families and according to recent classification it is divided into four subfamilies and 17 tribes (Hind and Beentje 1994). Within the family, a total of 1535 genera with 26,000 species have been recorded. Asteraceae is widely distributed within diverse regions ranging from Southwest of US, Mexico, Southern Brazil, South Africa, Middle and Southwest Asia as well as Australia. South America is accepted to be phylogenetically the geographic origin of the family (Bremer 1994). Asteraceae is represented by 1209 species in the Flora of Turkey, out of which 447 are endemic, with an endemism of 37%. With a total number of 134 genera, this family constitutes the second largest family of Turkish Flora (Davis et al. 1988, Özhatay and Kültür 2006). The genus Jurinea is represented with 18 species within Mediterranean and Irano-Turanian phytogeographic regions of Anatolia. Five of these species are endemic to Turkey resulting in an endemism of 27.8% (Danin and Davis 1975, Dogan 2007, Dogan et al. 2007). Jurinea Cass. is one of the most important genera within Asteraceae and it comprises about 200 species (Susanna et al. 2006). Native distribution of Jurinea specifically involves Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and the Mediterranean basin. It is located within the monophyletic tribe Cardueae which is constituted of five subtribes, namely, Carduinae, Centaureinae, Carlininae, Cardopatiinae and Echinopinae. Jurinea is a genus located within the subtribe Carduinae (Susanna et al. 2006). Actual numerical-taxonomic studies of plant data were very scarce before the 1960s (Sokal and Sneath 1963). Numerical taxonomy has previously been applied in the classification of a number of plant taxa in Turkey (Togan et al. 1983, Kence et al. 1988, Dogan et al. 1992, Dogan 1997, Tutel et al. 2005). In this study, numeric taxonomic methods have been applied to classify 18 Jurinea taxa, on the basis of morphological and palynological characters. Materials and Methods Fifty one morphological and palynological characters were determined from the taxa of the genus Jurinea that are natural inhabitants of Turkey. List of species is given in Table 1. These characters were placed under eight headings and were included in the life form, shoot and leaf *Corresponding author: Department of Biology Education, Faculty of Education, Selcuk University, Konya, Turkey. Department of Field Crops, Faculty of Agriculture, Selcuk University, Konya, Turkey.