Artemisia chamaemelifolia Vill: a rare species of genus Artemisia ( Asteraceae-Anthemideae ) now present in the northeas
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ORIGINAL ARTICLE
Artemisia chamaemelifolia Vill: a rare species of genus Artemisia (Asteraceae-Anthemideae) now present in the northeast (Gilgit-Baltistan) region of Pakistan Adil Hussain 1,2
&
Muhammad Qasim Hayat 3 & Syed Ali Imran Bokhari 2
Received: 18 January 2020 / Accepted: 21 September 2020 # Plant Science and Biodiversity Centre, Slovak Academy of Sciences 2020
Abstract Artemisia chamaemelifolia Vill. is a perennial herb from the genus Artemisia of the Asteraceae family. This plant is mostly distributed in Armenia, Russia, Georgia and the Eurasian mountains including Cantabrian chain, Spanish Sierra Nevada, the Alps (France and Italy), Azerbaijan, Pyrenees, the Balkan range (Bulgaria), northeast and east Anatolia (Turkey) and the mountain regions of Northern Iran. In continuation of our preceding papers on Northeastern Pakistani Artemisia, here we report the local occurrence of A. chamaemelifolia from Pakistan by critically analyzing its geographical distribution. To date, we have found the species in 4 major areas of Ghizer, Gilgit, Hunza-Nagar and Skardu districts of Gilgit-Baltistan region of Pakistan. Phylogenetic analysis with maximum likelihood approach using the internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences of nuclear ribosomal DNA showed resemblance of northeastern Pakistani A. chamaemelifolia with other Artemisia species reported from other parts of the world. This species has been listed as critically endangered in the national IUCN red list of many countries. It is recommended that A. chamaemelifolia plant should be included in the rare plant species list in the flora of Pakistan. It will ensure conservation approaches to circumvent its extinction from the country. Keywords Artemisia chamnaemelifolia Vill. . Asteraceae . Gilgit-Baltistan . Pakistan . Rare species
Introduction The Asteraceae is one of the prevalent families of angiosperms with almost ~1700 genera and ~ 24,000 species mostly found in all parts of the world, except Antarctica (Funk et al. 2009; Oberprieler et al. 2009). The medicinally and economically significant genus Artemisia belongs to the family Asteraceae (tribe Anthemideae). It is a large taxonomically challenging genus with ~500 species including both herbs and shrubs (McArthur 1979; Ling 1982, 1994; Mabberley 1990; Bremer and * Adil Hussain [email protected] 1
Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Okara, Okara 56130, Pakistan
2
Department of Biological Sciences, International Islamic University Islamabad, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan
3
Department of Plant Biotechnology, Atta-ur-Rahman School of Applied Biosciences, National University of Sciences and Technology Islamabad, Islamabad 44000, Pakistan
Humphries 1993; Torrell et al. 2001; Vallés and McArthur 2001; Martin et al. 2003; Wang 2004). Some Artemisia species have significant economic status due to their antispasmodic, antiseptic, antitumor antimicrobial, antimalarial, antirheumatic and hepato-protective properties (Terra et al. 2007; Hussain et al. 2017). Species of this genu
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