Using morpho-anatomical characters of leaves and stems for distinguishing Bolboschoenus taxa: a case study of Serbian species

Abstract

The genus Bolboschoenus has been intensively studied from the morphological, ecological and physiological aspects, however, anatomical features of stems, leaves and epidermal structures of leaves have not been investigated sufficiently yet. The main objective of this study was to compare the four Bolboschoenus species growing in Serbia at the anatomical level and to define the most important anatomical characteristics for distinguishing these species. Descriptive, nonmetric multidimensional scaling and canonical discriminant analysis of the anatomical characters of leaves, stems and epidermal structures have been conducted for these purposes. The number and position of sclerenchyma strands in the leaves, the presence of bulliform cells in the epidermis, the number of translucent cell layers under the adaxial epidermis in the midrib area of the lamina, the number of aerial cavities in leaves and stems were the most significant anatomical characters for differentiation of species. The most differentiated species was B. glaucus, while B. laticarpus occupied an intermediate position between B. maritimus and B. planiculmis, on the one hand, and B. glaucus on the other. The combination of the anatomical features of leaves and stems and the epidermal structures had a more excellent taxonomic value than these three individual groups of features individually.

Keywords:

• Anatomy
• stem
• leaf
• differentiation
• Bolboschoenus

Acknowledgement

We are grateful to the two anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments and improving of this manuscript.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 All acronyms (except HMN) are in accordance with Index Herbariorum: BUNS - Herbarium of Department of Biology and Ecology, University of Novi Sad, BEO - Herbarium of the Balkan Peninsula, Botany Department, Natural History Museum, Belgrade, BEOU - Herbarium of Faculty of Biology, Institute of Botany and Botanical Garden “Jevremovac,” University of Belgrade, HMN - Herbarium Moesiacum Niš, Herbarium of Department of Biology and Ecology, University of Niš.

2 The term ‘ratio’ that we used in this article (within the character ‘The ratio of sclerenchyma strands along the lateral sides of the leaf’) does not represent the ratio of measurements of two characters (e.g., length and width to explain the shape) which is the subject of Fillips’ paper (Phillips 1983). In this article, the character ‘The ratio of sclerenchyma strands along the lateral sides of the leaf’ explains the position and number of sclerenchyma strands on abaxial and adaxial side of leaf. Detail description of this character together with photos with marked sclerenchyma strands are given in Supporting Information Appendix 1.

Additional information

Funding

This research was supported by the Ministry of Science, Technological Development and Innovations of the Republic of Serbia [grant number 451-03-47/2023-01/200124].