Reply to Oxelman et al.: On the taxonomic status of the plants regenerated from 30,000-y-old fruit tissue buried in Siberian permafrost

Abstract

We are grateful to Oxelman et al. (1) for their interest in the problem of taxonomic identification of plants regenerated from the fruit tissues of Late Pleistocene age and plants grown from the seeds of extant species growing in the Kolyma Lowland (2). The authors’ arguments regarding the determination of plant species are rather convincing. Indeed, our regenerated plants, as well as extant examples, show a high degree of similarity with plants of the Silene linnaeana Czerepanov (Lychnis sibirica L.) group, especially concerning the shape of inflorescences and calyces. At the same time, contemporary examples of the Silene genus found in Kolyma Lowland in the area of excavated burrows were identified as Silene stenophylla according to Tolmachev et al. (3). Moreover, the number of styles in our regenerated plants, as well as in extant ones, was found to be preferentially three (rarely 4 to 5), and the number of teeth in the dehiscing capsule was twice as many as the number of styles, which was typical for S. stenophylla, whereas the S. linnaeana group was indicated to have five styles (4). The areas of distribution S. stenophylla and some species of the S. linnaeana group overlap in Kolyma Lowland (3), which is in accordance with the fact of simultaneous discovery of their seeds in fossil burrows (5).