IDENTIFICATION OF CHINESE MEI FLOWER CULTIVARS BASED ON NUMERICAL TAXONOMY

Q.Q. Jia, Y.M. Li, L.Y. Xu, Q.L. Liu
Mei flower is a traditional Chinese flower. There are 318 cultivars (excluding Japanese cultivars) recorded in Chinese Mei Flower Cultivars published in 2010. In order to identify unknown cultivars, 36 morphological characters of the 312 cultivars were encoded, and they were classified by cluster analysis. Cultivar groups in the book International Code of Nomenclature for Cultivated Plants (International Assoc. for Plant Taxonomy, Utrecht, The Netherlands) were established through adjusting the weighting factors of the key characters. 118 Mei flower (unknown cultivars)samples were numerically classified again following the same criteria in places such as the Ming Dynasty City Wall Relics Park, Beijing Botanical Garden, Fragrant Hills Park, Zhongshan Park and Longtan Park. The data of 312 published cultivars and 118 unknown cultivars were gathered and clustered. The results showed that 6 cultivars in Beijing were clustered with the known cultivars. The majority cultivars with higher genetic distances might have variations after introduction and domestication, some of which may be taken as new cultivars. This study provided a scientific basis on cultivars identification of Mei flower by numerical taxonomy.
Jia, Q.Q., Li, Y.M., Xu, L.Y. and Liu, Q.L. (2014). IDENTIFICATION OF CHINESE MEI FLOWER CULTIVARS BASED ON NUMERICAL TAXONOMY. Acta Hortic. 1035, 43-52
DOI: 10.17660/ActaHortic.2014.1035.5
https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.2014.1035.5
Prunus mume, cultivar, identification, numerical taxonomy
English
1035_5
43-52

Acta Horticulturae