Variation in leaves and petals of Ranunculus subgenus Batrachium on the Aegean Islands, analysed by multivariate analysis

Abstract

Abstract Variation in leaves and petals was studied using canonical variate and cluster analyses. In total of 33 populations from eight islands leaf variation in laminar, floating leaves was studied in Ranunculus peltatus subsp. peltatus , subsp. baudotii and subsp. saniculifolius , and in R. tripartitus , all of which are heterophyllous in the Aegean area. The petal data set also included the homophyllous R. trichophyllus . The results of the analyses show that the populations are morphologically well differentiated and that petal shape has a tendency to discriminate between the populations somewhat better than leaf shape does. There was no basis for subdividing the populations into taxa on these characters. Analyses showed that up to 70% of the variation was distributed between populations, the remainder (5-18%) being within populations.