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In this paper, Allium sphaeronixum, a new species of the sect. Codonoprasum from Turkey, is described and illustrated. The new species is endemic to Central Anatolia, limited to the area of Nevşehir, where it grows on sandy or rocky soil at an elevation of 1000–1300 m a.s.l. Its morphology, phenology, karyology, leaf anatomy, seed testa micromorphology, chorology, and conservation status are examined in detail. The taxonomic relationships with the closest allied species, A. staticiforme and A. myrianthum, are also highlighted and discussed.

In the present study, successful germination protocols for 11 different taxa of the genus Helichrysum native to Sicily are discussed. Eight of them are representative of strict endemic Sicilian taxa, 2 are Italian sub endemic and one, namely H. stoechas, is a widespread W Mediterranean species. Given the controversial taxonomic status and relationships of the Mediterranean Helichrysum, the taxonomic approach enhancing the existing diversity of Sicilian populations was herein adopted from current literature. First germination records are given for some of the investigated taxa.

Loncomelos visianicum, a rare and poorly known geophyte of the Croatian flora, was described from the remote and uninhabited Adriatic island of Palagruza as Ornithogalum visianicum, and it has not been collected again for over a century. Basing on living materials, recently rediscovered in the locus classicus, it was possible to carry out a careful investigation regarding the morphology, karyology, leaf anatomy, and ecology of this very peculiar species. It is triploid, showing 2n = 42 + 0-5B chromosomes, taxonomically quite isolated, showing some morphological relationships with L. narbonense and L. creticum. Currently, L. visianicum is represented by a low number of individuals growing in rocky places within the xerophilous maquis. In addition to a detailed description, a new iconography, conservation status and identification key for Croatian taxa of the genus Loncomelos are also provided.

Partendo da una checklist aggiornata delle Crop Wild Relatives presenti in Italia, si sono così selezionati i taxa a più alta priorità di conservazione del genere Allium L. (pari a 28 taxa endemici e/o inseriti nelle più recenti Liste Rosse). Si è proceduto alla determinazione della loro distribuzione sulla base di database online, fonti di erbario e bibliografiche per le quali si è effettuato il relativo georeferenziamento. Per gli scopi del presente studio, una volta riportati su mappa i punti corrispondenti alle località di rinvenimento dei taxa oggetto d’analisi, si è poi sovrapposto un layer contenente tutte le aree protette presenti sul territorio (Riserve, Parchi, siti Natura2000, ecc.). Per tutti i taxa almeno un punto ricade all’interno di un’area sottoposta a protezione, mentre solo 75 punti su 217 (35%) ricadono all’interno di Parchi Nazionali, Riserve Naturali e altri siti classificati tra la categoria I e IV (IUCN Protected Area Categories System). Si è poi verificato quali specie sono conservate presso banche del germoplasma tramite la consultazione dei database disponibili. La stima dello stato di conservazione ex situ di questi 28 taxa, sebbene parziale e vincolata al ristretto numero di dati disponibili, ha evidenziato che solo 10 delle specie prioritarie sono conservate presso banche del germoplasma.

This study investigated seed germination in nine psammophilous species occurring in Sicilian sand dunes, some of which, such as Muscari gussonei, Launaea resedifolia and Pancratium maritimum, are endemic and/or rare and very scattered in the area. Different germination protocols were tested for one or more populations and the best germination results per species are provided, reporting experimental conditions and specific comments on the germination behaviour.

Vicia brulloi, a new species from Peloritani range in NE Sicily, is described and illustrated. It is a perennial climbing liane linked to riparian woods, showing close relationship mainly with V. pisiformis, having a scattered European distribution. In particular, V. brulloi is a very rare and extremely localized species morphologically well distinct from V. pisiformis in several remarkable features, such as the dense indumentum covering the vegetative structures and calyces, the shape and size of flower pieces, pods, seeds, as well as seed testa micromorphology. Another relevant peculiarity of V. brulloi is the lower tooth of the calyx replaced by a green leafy appendix, character infrequent in legumes and hitherto never observed in other Vicia species, which clearly represents the residue of its ancestral foliar origin. The morphology, pollen grain and seed testa micromorphology, chromosome complement 2n = 2x = 12, seedling features, reproductive biology, biogeography, habitat, ecology, conservation status and taxonomic relationships of the new species are examined.

Despite an increasing societal awareness and sensitivity about biological diversity and nature conservation as pivotal matters for human survival and well-being, plant systematics has gone through a steady decline in interest, and researches on these topics are often neglected. This particularly applies to plant morphology in its broad sense (i.e. including anatomy, histology, micro-morphology), which has increasingly become marginalized and considered less important than other scientific methods in plant biology. Notwithstanding, even in the current times of genomics (plus other “omics” topics) and functional ecology, when trait-based approaches are essential for studying and understanding plant functions and species relationships, comparative morphology as integrative discipline still assumes a pivotal role, remaining fundamentally relevant to nearly all fields of plant biology. Lots of studies have demonstrated how vegetative and reproductive characters, and their anatomical and/or micro-morphological structures, can be informative for phylogenetic studies and helpful to solve taxonomic problems at various levels. Most phenotypic traits show adaptive variation and different range of plasticity which have proved to be of great ecological and physiological significance and useful, for instance, in reconstructing plant adaptation to past climatic conditions or establishing defence mechanisms and structural changes in response to stress and climate changes, which all are basic information for nature conservation. Meanwhile, understanding patterns and origins of such morphological modifications is crucial to address main evo-devo questions. The role in other applied sciences, as agriculture, bioengineering, and forensic botany, is no less important. Contrary to common belief, plant morphology is not a conservative finished science, but, like other sciences, it is open to constant innovations involving concepts (e.g. the shifting from structure-based to function-based evolutionary perspective) and methods. Actually, plant morphology has changed over time and improved its analytical approaches embracing new technologies and tools, without neglecting traditional methods. Examples of such applications will be provided and discussed.

Sicilian forest ecosystems are, in general, numerically poor in terms of their floristic composition. As many studies on Sicilian dendroflora have highlighted, such poorness is not intrinsic to forest formations, but it is due to the millenary human pressures. Repeated passage of fire, continuous wood usage and reforestations by single or few species dra- matically reduced the plant biodiversity of Sicilian forest ecosystems, often suffering of monodominance. The Sicilian dendroflora includes several endangered species, such as Abies nebrodensis, Betula aetnensis, Celtis tournefortii subsp. asperrima and subsp. aetnensis, as the wild pears, which in Sicily are represented by 4 endemic species, in addition to the commonly known Pyrus spinosa and P. pyraster. Similarly, the genus Salix counts 8 different species instead of the given 4. Thus, higher attention toward all these taxa, which strongly improve the forest heritage of specific areas, is needed. Throughout their knowledge, survey, propagation and extensive use, the risk of local and general biodiversity loss can be limited. These actions necessarily require a targeted nursery program aimed to produce plantlets with high genetic variability starting from local propagation material.

Pancratium L. is the most widespread genus of the Eurasian clade of Amaryllidaceae. It includes about 20 species of bulbous herbaceous geophytes, naturally occurring only in Macaronesia, Mediterranean basin, and throughout Africa to tropical Asia, but also introduced and cultivated in many countries (De Castro & al.2012). Pancratium species generally occur in specialized habitats, such as dry rocky slopes, cliffs, sandy seashores, coastal dunes, desert sandy soils. Leaf features are the main adaptive strategies of these plants in response to the numerous environmental constraints. Leaves in Pancratium show a gross morphological identity being usually glaucous, ensiform, parallel-veined, plane-convex to slightly V-shaped, straight to curly or spirally twisted. Difference at macroscopic level also regards leaf tip (acute to obtuse) and lamina width, ranging among different species from 0.2 up to 5 cm. Despite such uniformity of the leaf visible traits, micro-morphological and anatomical characteristics reveal significant variation both at intra-specific and inter-specific levels, which have proven to strongly depend on adaptation to microclimatic and ecological local conditions, such as temperature, water availability, insolation (Morton 1965; Sultan &al.2010; Perrone & al. 2013, 2015). Here we present preliminary results of a comparative morpho-anatomical study carried out on leaves of some species of Pancratium from different localities of Mediterranean area in order to assess the range of inter-specific variation to be used as additional evidence for taxonomic delimitation, as well as population similarity or dissimilarity related to ecological adaptation. Selected species were P. sickenbergeri Boiss., P. foetidum Pomel, P. illyricum L., and P. maritimum L., including plants from Linosa (Pelagie Islands) previously referred to P. linosae Soldano & F. Conti, a taxonomic distinction not supported by molecular data (De Castro & al.2012; Giovino & al. 2015). Morphometric analysis and statistics were made on 37 micro-morphological and anatomical characters calculated from 10 samples for each population. The significance of variation for each trait was tested by one-way ANOVA. Data comparison was made by three multivariate approaches: stepwise DFA, PCA, and UPGMA cluster analysis based on squared Euclidean distance. The comparative analysis of leaf traits of the investigated taxa of Pancratium confirmed a rather stable and uniform leaf morpho-anatomical structure (Rudall 1995). Notwithstanding, significant differences in the size, number and/or type of several micro-morphological and anatomical leaf traits were detected as clearly linked to specific environmental conditions. As expected, leaves of P. sickenbergeri from Israeli desert showed the major mix of xeromorphic characteristics, such as very undulate leaf surface, the thickest epidermis and palisade tissue, the lowest number of veins which are very narrow, high stomata index, wide mesophyll with large spongy tissue. Samples clustered according to taxa in all multivariate analyses. Cross-validation results of the discriminant analysis provided sample percentages correctly classified to each group ranging from 90% to 100% with respect to P. sickenbergeri, P. illyricum, and P. maritimum from Is. of Linosa, while the overall percentage was 63.33%, due to some overlapping of different populations of P.maritimum and P.foetidum from Algeria. In summary, there is a strong relationships between leaf morpho-anatomical traits and ecological adaptation to different microclimatic conditions. In addition, our study also revealed marked diversity between the examined populations of P. foetidum coming from different habitats, with leaves of long-term cultivated samples at Catania Botanical Garden highly diverging from those ones of wild N African specimens.

Sono riportati i risultati relativi alla caratterizzazione morfologica, distribuzione attuale , ecologia e correlazioni sistematiche della specie endemica Anthemis aeolica

Although lots of studies have been carried out through various analytical approaches and at different taxonomic levels, this overview reveals that actually a comprehensive biosystematic survey on the Mediterranean wild populations of Brassica oleracea group is still lacking.

Il libro descrive l'Orto Botanico di Catania, la storia e le sue collezioni di piante. Nato nel 1858 per volontà della Regia Università e ampliato nel 1860 con un'area destinata alla flora locale - è ancora oggi suddiviso in Hortus universalis e Hortus siculus. Con l'attuale estensione di quasi due ettari, è tutt'ora rinomato per le collezioni viventi di succulente, di palme e di specie endemiche della flora locale. L'Orto Botanico di Catania rappresenta una realtà ormai consolidata per il territorio catanese, siciliano e italiano. Pur non avendo grandi dimensioni, esso presenta una grande valenza scientifica che deriva anche dal suo diretto collegamento con le strutture dipartimentali universitarie dedicate alle Scienze Botaniche. Di grande valore sono le sue collezioni, descritte e illustrate in dettaglio, ed anche le modernissime strutture dedicate all'Erbario e alla Banca del germoplasma. Un capitolo è dedicato alle curiosità botaniche e alle rarità esotiche presenti.

New findings for Malus crescimmanoi, originally known from the mountain area near Floresta (Nebrodi Mts.). The new sites fall in Madonie Mts., where the species is found at the edge of Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl. and Fagus sylvatica woods, growing on quartzarenitic substratum at 1200-1800 m of elevation. These new localities are placed at the south-western limit of Fagus sylvatica distribution area, on both north-facing [Contrada Sempria (Castelbuono) and slopes of Madonna dell’Alto (Castellana Sicula)], and south-facing slopes [Locality Prato (Polizzi Generosa)].

Nell’ambito delle attività di promozione della conservazione della biodiversità vegetale in Sicilia, l’Orto Botanico di Palermo ha sviluppato una serie di progetti, alcuni dei quali in collaborazione con gli enti gestori di aree protette. Fra di essi rientra la realizzazione di una banca vivente del germoplasma vegetale, organizzata ad Ucria, in provincia di Messina, in collaborazione con il Parco regionale dei Nebrodi. Oltre a una considerevole collezione di fruttiferi anticamente coltivati e reperiti nelle campagne siciliane, il patrimonio di agrobiodiversità della Banca, comprende varietà di piante ortive tra cui emerge la collezione di fagioli, risultato di una attenta esplorazione del territorio. Obbiettivo di questa specifica raccolta è stato quello di valorizzare il patrimonio agro-alimentare delle comunità locali, mediante il recupero di cultivar autoctone o in via di estinzione.