Biosystematic study of Cyperaceae species from Pakistan: Carex caucasica, Carex shaanxiensis, Carex infuscata and Erioscirpus comosus.

Abstract

Cyperaceae are mostly perennial or rarely annual herbs. The family members are also known as sedges. The members of the family possess significant ecological, economical, ethnobotanical, and horticultural importance thus playing role in numerous biological activities. Sedges occur primarily in moist temperate to wet tropical regions of the world including wetlands, marches, moist grasslands. Cyperaceae members have great economical, ecological and ethnobotanical importance. Morphological study of the Cyperaceae family is useful but difficult due to complex inflorescence. So, there is requirement of definitive techniques for the taxonomic study of sedges. This research emphases on the biosystematic study of four Cyperaceae species; Carex caucasica, Carex shaanxiensis, Carex infuscata and Erioscirpus comosus. This work is based on morphological, micro-morphological and phylogenetic study of the species collected from Northern areas of Pakistan. The stereomicroscope is used for unveiling the morphological characters to observe various parts of inflorescence: utricle, anthers, pollens and glumes. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) is used to unveil the micro-morphological characters. Molecular study was done by using three marker genes ITS, ETS, and matK. Three trees (Bayesian, NJ and maximum likelihood) were constructed to unveil the phylogeny. This computational work showed close relationship of specie with alike taxa. Present study gives thorough interpretation of morphological, micro-morphological and molecular data analysis of these four species.