Morphological, anatomical and karyological investigations of the Turkish endemic species Lathyrus woronowii Bornm. (Fabaceae)

Abstract

-Lathyrus woronowii Bornm., an endemic species of Turkey, is threatened with extinction due to dam construction. It exists only in the Çoruh valley, Artvin. This annual species is in the critically endangered (CR) category according to the International Union of Conservation of Nature (IUCN) criteria. Its morphology, anatomy and karyology are studied here for the first time. A detailed description is given and the general appearance of the species has been drawn; cross sections from the stem and leaf have been taken and examined; and the diploid chromosome number (2n = 14) has been reported and illustrated for the first time.

Assessing karyotype diversity in the genus Lathyrus L. (Fabaceae)

“…The karyotype asymmetry measures, such as chromosome number and morphology have been widely accepted as reliable diagnostic criteria for different sections of the Lathyrus. There are numerous studies involving karyotype analysis of Lathyrus species (Ball, 1968;Evren et al, 1994;Sahin et al, 1998Sahin et al, , 2000Badr et al, 2009;Günes, 2011;Ceccarelli et al, 2013;Günes and Meric, 2017). Cytologically, most of the species of Lathyrus have somatic chromosomes number of 2n = 14 and the basic chromosome number (x) is 7 (Fedorov, 1969;Kakoli and Sumitra, 1991;Gunes and Cirpici, 2008).…”