Updated taxonomic descriptions, iconography, and habitat preferences of <em>Brachypodium distachyon, B. stacei</em>, and <em>B. hybridum</em> (Poaceae)

Abstract

Catalan, P., Lopez-Alvarez, D., Bellosta, C. & Villar, L. 2016. Updated taxonomic descriptions, iconography, and habitat preferences of Brachypodium distachyon, B. stacei, and B. hybridum (Poaceae). Anales Jard. Bot. Madrid 73(1): e028. We present an updated morphological revision of the three annual species of the genus Brachypodium (Poaceae): B. distachyon, B. stacei, and B. hybridum, which were recently segregated as independent species from the single-species complex B. distachyon s.l. These three species have been proposed as a model system for grass polyploid speciation, and their genomes have been sequenced. However, despite the increasing number of genomic and population-genetic studies conducted for each of these species, no taxonomic updating has been done on them since their original descriptions. B. stacei, the rarest species of the complex, has a protologue based only on the study of specimens from its type locality in Torrent (Formentera, Spain). In this study we update the taxonomic descriptions of the three species using morphoanatomical data from specimens collected throughout their respective native circum-Mediterranean distributions as well as in other localities where they are non-autochthonous. We also provide icons for each species and information about their habitat preferences and geographic distributions.