tailieunhanh - Micromorphological studies on the genus Lotus L. (Fabaceae: Loteae) from Egypt

Trichomes, epidermal cell features, and seed coat sculpturing of 12 Lotus taxa from Egypt were studied using scanning electron microscopy. In addition, statistical analysis for the taxa under investigation was carried out. The results revealed that trichomes have high taxonomic significances between studied taxa. | Turkish Journal of Botany Turk J Bot (2017) 41: 273-288 © TÜBİTAK doi: Research Article Micromorphological studies on the genus Lotus L. (Fabaceae: Loteae) from Egypt 1 1 2, 3 Momen ZAREH , Ahmed FARIED *, Nashwa FARGHALY Department of Biology, Faculty of Applied Science, Umm Al-Qurra University, Mecca, Saudi Arabia 2 Department of Botany and Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Assiut University, Assiut, Egypt 3 Department of Botany and Microbiology, Faculty of Science, Sohag University, Sohag, Egypt Received: Accepted/Published Online: Final Version: Abstract: Trichomes, epidermal cell features, and seed coat sculpturing of 12 Lotus taxa from Egypt were studied using scanning electron microscopy. In addition, statistical analysis for the taxa under investigation was carried out. The results revealed that trichomes have high taxonomic significances between studied taxa. Anticlinal and periclinal cell walls and epidermal cell shape for the stem, leaf, and calyx for each taxon were examined. Seed coat sculpturing exhibited 4 main different surface patterns categories: rugose, reticulate, sulcate, and verrucate. These features can serve as good diagnostic characters at the species level of the genus Lotus. Key words: Fabaceae, Lotus, seed, scanning electron microscopy, trichomes, Egypt 1. Introduction Leguminosae (Fabaceae) is the third largest family of flowering plants, after Compositae and Orchidaceae (Christenhusz and Byng, 2016) . It contains approximately 720 genera and more than 18,000 species worldwide (Lewis et al., 2005; Escaray et al., 2012). Lotus (120–130 species) is the largest genus of the tribe Loteae. Based on previous studies (Gillett, 1958; Heyn, 1967; Kramina, 1999, 2006; Kramina and Sokoloff, 2004), Lotus is a taxonomically difficult genus. No worldwide taxonomic studies for the whole genus have been produced since the monograph of Brand (1898). A