Abstract
Three species of the genus Sonchus L. (Sonchus asper, S. oleraceus and S. wightianus) were collected from the Malwa region of Punjab during 2019 to 2020. These species were studied for cytomorphological variations. The species under investigation were identified based on their morphological descriptions. Sonchus asper (L.) Hill and Sonchus wightianus DC. possess the same number of chromosomes (2n=2x=18) whereas Sonchus oleraceus (L.) L. is tetraploid with 2n=4x=32 chromosomes. Chromosome number of S. wightianus (2n=2x=18) was worked out for the first time from the state of Punjab. Sonchus olereceus has larger pollens than S. asper and S. wightianus. This study will be useful for researchers, taxonomists and cytologists for accurate identification of these three species.
Highlights
Sonchus L. is a member of the family Asteraceae with 95 species distributed throughout the world including western Morocco, Ethiopia, southern Sudan, South Africa, Canary Island, Europe, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Turkistan (Boulos 1960; Cho et al 2019)
Sonchus asper and S. oleraceus were common in the previous studies whereas S. wightianus or S. arvensis were frequently misplaced under confusing species
Three species of the genus Sonchus, i.e., Sonchus asper, S. oleraceus, and S. wightianus were collected from the Malwa region of Punjab during 2019 to 2020
Summary
Sonchus L. is a member of the family Asteraceae with 95 species distributed throughout the world including western Morocco, Ethiopia, southern Sudan, South Africa, Canary Island, Europe, Iran, Iraq, Egypt, Afghanistan, and Turkistan (Boulos 1960; Cho et al 2019). Earlier four species of Sonchus (S. asper Vill., S. arvensis L., S. oleraceus L., & S. maritimus L.) were reported from British India (Hooker 1882) and undivided Punjab (Bamber 1916). Sharma (1990) enlisted S. asper, S. oleraceus, and S. wightianus from Punjab. Later on, Sidhu (1991) recorded S. asper, S. arvensis, and S. oleraceus from the state of Punjab.
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