Pollen characterization of Salvia species subgenus Calosphace

Abstract

Pollen characters are an important source of information in many fields of biology, for some species groups these may have taxonomic significance. Salvia pollen are monads, radial, isopolar, circular, oblate to oblate-spheroidal shape, hexacolpate with microrreticulate exine and small to medium pollen grains.  Here we describe pollen morphology under light microscope for 28 Salvia subgenus Calosphace species, including 19 of Epling ́s sections and assess if there are pollen differences between species and whether the species classified in a section are similar.  We report for the first time pollen morphology for 19 species. Of the 28 species studied we could only observe size differences, with smallest grains in S. breviflora, S. connivens, S. curviflora and S. polystachia whereas, largest grains are in S. amarissima, S. cinnabarina, S. clarckowanii y S. lavanduloides. Neighbor Joining dendrogram does not cluster the species within the five sections where more than one species is present. Although pollen morphology for these species has no taxonomic value or clusters species classified within the same section; we believe it to be necessary to keep on reporting these findings and eventually reach a sampling correspondent to the subgenus diversity.