The technical core of the study rests on a classic but still indispensable method: the chromosome squash preparation. For most of the species examined, researchers germinated seeds in the laboratory and harvested root tips, the regions of most active cell division. These tips were pre-treated with a colchicine solution, either 0.3% or 0.4% depending on the laboratory protocol, for about three hours. Colchicine disrupts the spindle fibers that normally pull chromosomes apart during cell division, effectively arresting cells in metaphase, the stage at which chromosomes are most condensed and easiest to count. The tissue was then fixed in Carnoy solution, an ethanol and acetic acid mixture that preserves cellular architecture, before hydrolysis in hydrochloric acid at 60 degrees Celsius and staining with Schiff reagent or leuco-basic fuchsine, dyes that bind specifically to DNA. The result is a single-layer preparation in which each cell’s chromosome complement can be observed and counted under the microscope.

The first of the new counts concerns Damasonium alisma, a striking aquatic plant of the water-plantain family, sampled from a temporary Mediterranean pond at Funtana Satoa on the island of Sardinia. The team counted 2n = 28 chromosomes, confirming that the Sardinian plants are tetraploid, with four copies of the basic chromosome set. This aligns with the established understanding that D. alisma is a tetraploid species distributed across England, France, Italy, Portugal, Russia, and Ukraine, and is considered the northern counterpart of the diploid D. bourgaei, which has 2n = 14. The finding matters because a previous count from Sicily, reported decades ago under a different name, showed a diploid number, and D. bourgaei itself has been recorded in Sicily. That raises the possibility of a misidentification in the earlier Sicilian record. The authors argue that clarifying the true distribution of these two taxa in Italy will require a more in-depth study combining morphological and karyological evidence.

Sardinian temporary ponds yielded another first: the chromosome number of Helosciadium crassipes, an umbellifer found in shallow seasonal wetlands that flood in winter or late spring. These habitats belong to a vegetation alliance associated with habitat 3120 of the European Habitats Directive, which protects oligotrophic waters with amphibious vegetation, a priority conservation type. Until now, the species’ chromosome number was entirely unknown. The count of 2n = 22, obtained from plants collected at Perdiana in the province of Oristano, fits neatly with numbers reported for the closely related H. inundatum species group and for most other members of the genera Helosciadium and Apium. For a plant whose wetland habitats are among Europe’s most threatened, even this basic piece of biological information adds to the foundation needed for conservation planning.

The mountain floras of southern and northern Italy contributed their own surprises, particularly among the hawkweeds of the genus Hieracium, a group notorious for its complexity. Hieracium terraccianoi, a hemicryptophytic herb endemic to the Calabrian side of the Pollino Massif within Pollino National Park, was counted for the first time from material gathered at the species’ type locality. The result, 2n = 36, corresponds to a tetraploid level and agrees with counts available for other members of Hieracium sect. Grovesiana, a cluster of similar morphotypes that has challenged botanists for decades.

Three more hawkweed counts, all yielding 2n = 27, or a triploid level, further illuminate this intricate genus. Hieracium hypochoeroides subsp. cilentanum, a rock-dwelling endemic of Monte Cervati in Campania counted at 1,860 meters elevation, belongs to an aggregate of apomictic taxa that likely evolved during the post-glacial period, many of them narrow endemics that survived as relicts in southern Europe. Apomixis, the asexual production of seeds without fertilization, allows triploid plants to reproduce despite their odd chromosome number, which would normally render them sterile. Hieracium lesimanum and Hieracium scopolioides, both endemic to Mount Lesima in the Ligurian Apennines and both known only from their type localities on the mountain’s northern slope, were also found to be triploid. For H. scopolioides, the count is consistent with the only known ploidy estimate in its section, while H. lesimanum’s number matches observations in related taxa of the H. prenanthoidea group in Europe. The repeated pattern of triploidy in these young, range-restricted endemics supports the view that apomictic reproduction has been a major engine of diversification in this genus, generating distinct lineages without the need for sexual recombination.

The carnation family contributed two notable results. Dianthus carthusianorum subsp. tenorei, a subspecies endemic to Italy and distributed through the southern-central Apennines from Marche to Calabria, was counted for the first time from material collected at Monte Pollino at 2,000 meters. The standard count of 2n = 30 confirms the numbers obtained for other subspecies in Italy and central-eastern Europe. Intriguingly, the researchers also spotted cells with 2n = 60 chromosomes within the same root tip, a phenomenon known as endopolyploidy, in which cells duplicate their DNA without dividing. Endopolyploidy is common in many Dianthus species and, while it does not change the germ line’s genetic makeup, it reflects an additional layer of genomic flexibility in this charismatic genus of ornamental and wild flowers.

The second caryophyllid finding concerns Illecebrum verticillatum, a sub-Atlantic species of temporary ponds across Europe and North Africa. In Italy, the plant occurs in Piedmont, Sardinia, and Tuscany, and the Tuscan populations are particularly rare, with recent confirmations restricted to a single area at Montalbano in the municipality of Carmignano. Material from that area showed 2n = 10, a low chromosome number already known from elsewhere in Europe but recorded here for the first time in Italian populations. Meanwhile, in Piedmont, the team obtained the first Italian count for Crupina vulgaris, a widespread southern European composite sampled near Acqui Terme. The result, 2n = 30, matches counts from other European populations and provides a useful reference point for distinguishing the species from its relatives: the more Mediterranean C. crupinastrum has 2n = 28, while C. intermedia, an allopolyploid of hybrid origin, has 2n = 58. Because these species overlap in Italy, chromosome data offer a critical line of evidence for identifying plants and tracing how hybridization has shaped the group’s evolution.

What emerges from this cumulative exercise is a portrait of the Italian flora as a laboratory of evolutionary processes. Polyploidy, apomixis, endopolyploidy, and hybridization each leave fingerprints in chromosome numbers, and every new count helps place a species on the map of these processes. Tetraploid aquatic plants in Sardinian ponds, triploid hawkweeds clinging to Apennine and Apuan summits, and diploid rarities in disappearing wetlands each tell a story about how lineages originate, persist, and sometimes retreat to the edges of their former ranges. Chromosome counts also have immediate practical value: they help resolve taxonomic ambiguities, flag likely misidentifications in old records, and inform conservation assessments for narrow endemics whose entire known range may span a single mountain slope or a single pond.

The study is the thirteenth contribution to a long-running series dedicated to chromosome numbers for the Italian flora, and the series continues to accept new data. Researchers are invited to submit contributions including voucher specimens and methods, ensuring that each count remains traceable to a physical herbarium or germplasm record. That rigor, with seeds deposited in germplasm banks and herbarium specimens preserved for verification, is what transforms a simple count of chromosomes into durable scientific evidence. As Mediterranean temporary ponds shrink and mountain endemics face shifting climates, documenting the genomic architecture of Italy’s plants is not merely bookkeeping. It is a race to understand, and ultimately to protect, a living heritage written in chromosomes.

Subject of Research: Chromosome numbers of plant taxa in the Italian flora

Article Title: Chromosome numbers for the Italian flora: 13

Article References: Astuti, G., Bagella, S., Bajona, E., Barone, G., Becca, G., Caria, M. C., Di Gristina, E., Fainelli, F., Franzoni, J., Giacò, A., Orsenigo, S., Paliy, M., Rivieccio, G., Urbani, M., & Peruzzi, L. (2023). Chromosome numbers for the Italian flora: 13. Italian Botanist, 16, 135-148. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.16.116700

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/italianbotanist.16.116700

Keywords: chromosome counts, Italian flora, cytogenetics, polyploidy, apomixis, Hieracium, endemic plants, Sardinia, temporary ponds, Dianthus, plant taxonomy, karyology

The most dramatic of the new records concerns Lomelosia micrantha, a small member of the honeysuckle family that had never before been confirmed for Italy. The story began in 2008, when plants found along the Taro river in Emilia-Romagna were identified as Lomelosia stellata and celebrated as a species new to the national flora. That identification, initially confirmed by a Spanish specialist on the basis of photographs, was later questioned on an online botanical forum, where Valerio Lazzeri suggested the plants might instead belong to L. micrantha. Fresh fieldwork and a careful re-examination of herbarium specimens have now settled the debate. The diagnostic characters are subtle but decisive: the involucel-corona, a cup-like structure surrounding the flower, is significantly narrower in L. micrantha, and the involucral bracts are entire rather than frequently divided as in L. stellata. The consequence is a double correction, an exclusion of one species and the addition of another, and a remarkable biogeographic fact, because the Taro river population of roughly one hundred individuals represents the westernmost known locality of a species whose range otherwise stretches from the central Balkan Peninsula to central Asia.

Equally striking is the fate of the orchid Orchis patens subsp. brevicornis, reported for the first time in Emilia-Romagna from a dry, shrubby grassland near the Passo del Pellizzone in the province of Parma. This orchid has a disjunct distribution that reads like a biogeographic puzzle: it occurs in northern Africa along the Algerian-Tunisian Atlas and in north-western Italy, while the Canarian populations are now treated as a separate species, O. canariensis. Until now, the Italian plants were known only from Liguria. The new population consists of just nine individuals scattered over fifteen square metres, but its position changes the known envelope of the species in two directions at once. It is the highest recorded locality, the first above one thousand metres of elevation, and the northernmost point of the entire species range. Records like this matter beyond national checklists, because range edges are precisely where climate change and habitat alteration leave their fingerprints first, and a population of nine plants on a south-facing slope is as fragile as it is scientifically valuable.

The Apennine hawkweeds and their relatives dominate the paper’s regional novelties. No fewer than seven subspecies of Hieracium, a genus famous among botanists for its apomictic reproduction and bewildering morphological variation, are newly recorded for the Veneto region, nearly all from the Dolomites of the province of Belluno. Hieracium caesium subsp. brennerianum was found at two sites in the Cadore valley, H. dentatum subsp. pseudoplantagineum and H. froelichianum subsp. subvulsum on siliceous rock pastures between the Fedaia and Padon passes at around two thousand metres, H. diaphanoides subsp. diaphanoides and H. levicaule subsp. pseudosenile at forest margins in Comelico Superiore, and H. pallescens subsp. ovale on limestone rocks near Feltre at a surprisingly low two hundred and fifty metres. Each determination was made or confirmed by the specialist Gottschlich, whose expertise is essential in a group where species boundaries are drawn with characters as fine as the hairiness of flower stalks.

One hawkweed record stands out as a genuine national first. Hieracium cydoniifolium subsp. trichanthodium was collected in August 2024 in thinned subalpine coniferous forest on Marteller granite in the Vinschgau valley of South Tyrol, at just over two thousand metres, and it is new for the flora of Italy as a whole. The subspecies had previously been known only from the Swiss cantons of Valais, Bern and Grisons, so its discovery on the Italian side of the Alps extends its range southward across the watershed. Morphologically it sits in an awkward transitional position: it closely resembles Hieracium prenanthoides but is much hairier on the peduncles than any subspecies of that species, representing what the authors describe as a first step toward it. In apomictic groups, where seeds are produced without sexual recombination and each variant can persist essentially unchanged, such transitional forms are exactly the material from which new species eventually crystallize, which is why documenting them precisely, with specimens deposited in public herbaria, is more than bureaucratic housekeeping.

The paper also performs some botanical detective work that erases species from regional lists, and these exclusions are arguably as important as the additions. In Campania, Lophiolepis morisiana, a thistle relative, has been struck from the flora. The trail of evidence is tangled: a nineteenth-century record by Martelli and Tanfani actually referred to Cirsium eriophorum, a later citation of a Matese lake locality was erroneous, and the key record from the Partenio massif published in 1989 is not supported by any specimen in the Naples herbarium. Meanwhile, the similar Lophiolepis lacaitae, which was never reported by those authors, does in fact occur in the same massif. A parallel correction concerns Pimpinella anisoides in Puglia. The species had entered the national checklist on the strength of records from the Murgia plateau, but re-examination of the original 1949 specimen collected by Scaramuzzi, and of a second specimen from Alberobello, showed that both plants are in fact Ammoides pusilla, a different umbellifer entirely. Two misidentified herbarium sheets had quietly sustained a phantom population for more than seventy years.

Not all corrections are exclusions; some are rehabilitations. Lamium album, the white dead-nettle, is newly recorded for Lazio on the basis of two collections, one from a beech-forest clearing on Monte L’Inversaturo dating back to 1992 and another from tall-herb grassland on Monte Pelone in the Monti della Laga made in 2024. The species had been regarded as wrongly reported for the region, but the diagnostic characters cited in the classic 1989 monograph of the genus, an oblique internal ring of hairs inside the corolla and light yellow pollen grains, distinguish it from the superficially similar L. maculatum. Similarly, Potentilla verna has been confirmed for Lazio from mesophilous grasslands near Amatrice, a region scarred by the 2016 earthquakes, despite recent regional floras omitting it and earlier authors dismissing past records as erroneous. In Basilicata, Trifolium mutabile subsp. gussoneanum was confirmed on volcanic soils near Rionero in Vulture, vindicating a record first made in 1948 and clarified through successive revisions of a 1930s specimen.

Range extensions for Apennine endemics add another layer of significance. Senecio apenninus, a ragwort recently re-evaluated as endemic to the central Apennines, where it is widespread in Marche, Umbria, Lazio and Abruzzo, has now been found in the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines between Monte Paitino and Monte Sillara and near Cima Canuti, at elevations around seventeen hundred metres. The discovery shifts the northern limit of its range considerably. Its relative, Senecio nemorensis subsp. apuanus, was recorded for the first time in Emilia-Romagna near the Cerreto pass, both at a beech-forest margin and along the Secchia river in grey-alder riparian woodland, echoing populations known from the Tuscan side of the same pass. Elsewhere, Angelica sylvestris was confirmed for Puglia in the Monti Dauni, Cuscuta palaestina subsp. palaestina, a stem parasite, was found in an abandoned olive grove in the Maremma regional park as a new record for Tuscany, Dianthus rupicola subsp. rupicola appeared on volcanic cliffs of the island of Ponza as new for Lazio, Origanum onites turned up in a disused limestone quarry near Gallipoli as new for Puglia, and Thalictrum simplex subsp. tenuifolium was confirmed in a Piedmont wetland near Cesana Torinese, close to a historical Sestrière locality now almost certainly lost to the development of the ski resort after 1935.

Three Mediterranean woody species also changed their legal-botanical status in the north. Ficus carica, the common fig, was found colonizing the interstices of a stone retaining wall under a motorway overpass in Collegno near Turin, where plants of several ages form a stable, fruit-bearing population, justifying a change from casual to naturalized alien in Piedmont. Even more impressive is Laurus nobilis, the bay laurel, discovered inside the Brich di Zumaglia nature reserve in the Biella Alps: more than one hundred individuals in two generations, with mature plants six to eight metres tall, growing beneath a mixed canopy of eastern white pine, Norway spruce and sweet chestnut, alongside an undergrowth rich in cherry laurel. On the Molise coast, within a Natura 2000 site at the Saccione river mouth, a population of about fifty oleander individuals in the back-dune zone, plus scattered plants elsewhere along the shore, marks Nerium oleander subsp. oleander as a naturalized alien new for that region. Such status changes feed directly into invasion biology assessments, since naturalized species are the pool from which future invasive ones emerge.

Finally, the nomenclatural novelties show taxonomy in motion. Anemone alpina subsp. austroalpina is a new combination that moves a taxon formerly placed in Pulsatilla into Anemone, following recent molecular work showing that Anemone, in its broad sense, forms a well-supported clade that swallows Pulsatilla and a string of smaller genera. And Festuca × stacei, the hybrid between red fescue and Vulpia myuros, receives a new combination under Festuca because phylogenetic treatments now regard Vulpia as merely a synonym of Festuca, rendering the old hybrid genus name Festulpia obsolete. The paper closes with an extensive supplementary file of nomenclatural and distributional updates and corrigenda drawn from dozens of recent publications, underscoring that this series functions as a living correction service for the Italian flora. Every record, whether a nine-plant orchid on an alpine pass or a misidentified specimen from 1949, passes through the same pipeline: a documented collection, a deposited specimen, and a specialist’s determination, the unglamorous machinery that keeps a national flora honest.

Subject of Research: Updates to the distribution and taxonomy of Italy's native vascular flora

Article Title: Notulae to the Italian native vascular flora: 21

Article References: Bartolucci, F., Domina, G., Adorni, M., Alessandrini, A., Ardenghi, N. M. G., Argenti, C., Banfi, E., Bonari, G., Bonivento, E., Cantini, D., Cerbone, P., de Francesco, M. C., De Vivo, R., Del Guacchio, E., Di Pietro, A., Di Pietro, R., Forte, L., Galasso, G., Gennaio, R., … Lastrucci, L. (2026). Notulae to the Italian native vascular flora: 21. Italian Botanist, 21, 237-253. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.21.203684

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/italianbotanist.21.203684

Keywords: Italian flora, vascular plants, floristic records, Hieracium, Orchis patens, Lomelosia micrantha, nomenclature, herbarium specimens, range extension, naturalized alien species, Apennines, plant taxonomy

The effort builds on a cartographic tradition that stretches back almost half a century. The first map of Italian floristic knowledge was released in 1978, and a second edition followed in 2005. To create the new version, the researchers compiled a bibliographic catalogue of 3,423 scientific articles and 479 books or book chapters, organized by administrative region. Each reference was manually georeferenced to a polygon delimiting the spatial extent of the area it covered, using vector cartography from the Italian National Geoportal and toponyms drawn from the 1:25,000 topographic map series of the Italian Military Geographic Institute. The team adopted the same five-level classification system used in 2005, ranging from virtually unknown areas to well-known areas, allowing a direct comparison of knowledge across three benchmark years: 1978, 2005 and 2025.

To quantify progress objectively rather than relying on anecdotal impressions, the researchers introduced a new metric: the Index of Floristic Knowledge Advancement, or IFA. This index measures the proportion of maximum potential progress that each region has actually achieved between 2005 and the ideal state of complete knowledge, expressed as a normalized value between 0 and 1. Values are categorized as limited, moderate, high or very high. Crucially, all analyses were based on regional percentage distributions rather than absolute areas, ensuring that small regions could be compared fairly with large ones. At the national scale, the IFA was just 0.22 when comparing 1978 with 2005, but rose to 0.30 when comparing 2005 with 2025, a signal that the pace of discovery has accelerated even as the easiest gains have already been made.

The regional rankings tell a striking story. Emilia-Romagna emerged as the most comprehensively documented region in Italy, with an IFA of 0.81, the only region to reach the very high category. Its area classified as well-known soared from 26.52 percent to 82.01 percent over the two decades. Lombardia followed with 0.60, then Friuli-Venezia Giulia at 0.54, and Trentino-Alto Adige and Veneto tied at 0.53. In central Italy and the islands, Lazio scored 0.50, Sardegna 0.45 and Toscana 0.36. Trentino-Alto Adige deserves special mention for sheer data volume: the number of floristic records there jumped from 897,000 in 2005 to 2,191,000 in 2025, driven by two ongoing mapping projects, one for the province of Bolzano and one for the province of Trento.

The drivers of this acceleration are diverse. Coordinated scientific projects, citizen science programs, the development of digital databases such as the Wikiplantbase platforms, and a renewed focus on taxonomic research all played a role. In Piemonte, a collaborative mapping programme gathered more than 790,000 georeferenced records by 2021, most of them collected in the last two decades, while the annual series Note floristiche piemontesi has published over 1,350 records since 2005. In Toscana, the companion series Contributi per una flora vascolare di Toscana has added more than 1,200 records since 2009, and the monumental Flora Analitica della Toscana, published between 2016 and 2021, synthesized the region’s vascular flora in eight volumes. In Emilia-Romagna, a decade-long mapping project launched in 2016 has compiled over 200,000 bibliographic and original field records for the Romagna biogeographical region.

The discovery of new species has been equally impressive. Between 2005 and 2025, a total of 579 new names were published based on material collected in Italy, of which 126, roughly 22 percent, were later synonymized with previously described taxa. The remaining 453 accepted taxa include 291 species and 162 subspecies, and 443 of them are Italian endemics. Abruzzo leads the regional count with 74 newly described taxa, followed by Sicilia with 69, Toscana with 53 and Sardegna with 51. The genus Hieracium, the hawkweeds, dominates the list with 147 taxa, followed by the orchid genera Ophrys with 33 and Epipactis with 29, and the dandelion genus Taraxacum with 26. By family, Asteraceae accounts for 195 of the new taxa, with Orchidaceae contributing 44.

Yet the numbers also expose a structural weakness in Italian botany. The vast majority of publications, 2,931 of them, focus on small areas within a single region, while only 95 works cover at least 18 regions and a mere 2.43 percent address the national scale. Research effort is also geographically skewed: Sardegna, with 916 references, and Piemonte, with 784, together account for nearly a third of the total, while Basilicata, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Molise, Umbria and Valle d’Aosta each attracted about 300 references or fewer. The Orchidaceae family, beloved of amateur botanists, generated the most studies of any plant family, with 425 references representing 10.8 percent of the total output.

The north-south divide is the study’s most sobering finding. While northern regions surged ahead, progress in the south and on the islands was markedly slower. Calabria and Sicilia exhibited near-stagnation, with minimal advancement into the highest knowledge categories, and Basilicata, Molise and Umbria remained largely at intermediate levels with little change over two decades. Virtually unknown areas still persist in central-western Abruzzo, Campania, Puglia, Basilicata and Calabria, and large areas with only generic knowledge are concentrated in Liguria, Umbria, southern Abruzzo, northern Campania, northern Puglia, central Basilicata, central Calabria and central Sicilia. This is paradoxical given that much of the fieldwork organized by the Italian Botanical Society’s floristic working group was deliberately concentrated in southern Italy, yet these regions showed only modest improvements in documentation.

The analysis of newly published names also reveals instructive patterns about how taxonomy gets done. The 147 Hieracium names are almost exclusively the work of a single researcher, Günther Gottschlich, collaborating with local collectors. Among orchids, a group heavily studied by amateurs, the rate of synonymy is strikingly high: more than 45 percent of the 81 described names, 37 in total, are now considered synonyms. The authors argue that this contrast demonstrates a key lesson, namely that synergistic collaboration between professional and amateur taxonomists is essential for producing reliable and durable taxonomic hypotheses. In Sicilia, most of the 69 new species and subspecies described resulted from critical re-evaluation of previously known plants rather than genuine discoveries in under-explored areas, a reminder that naming is not the same as knowing.

Why does all this matter beyond the herbarium? Floristic knowledge, the authors contend, is a foundational, long-term investment and a cumulative record built through generations of fieldwork, and even a small floristic contribution is an essential component of global biodiversity knowledge, supporting taxonomic, biogeographic, evolutionary and conservation research. It is also a legal necessity: protected area managers rely on these baseline data to comply with monitoring obligations under Article 11 and reporting duties under Article 17 of the European Habitats Directive. Without a rigorous knowledge baseline, the researchers warn, advanced studies risk being erected on unstable ground, compromising the integrity, reproducibility and long-term value of the entire scientific enterprise. The message of the new map is clear: Italy knows its northern flora better than ever, but achieving a truly comprehensive picture of the country’s extraordinary plant diversity will require targeted fieldwork, sustained investment and far greater collaboration in the regions that time and funding have left behind.

Subject of Research: Twenty-year mapping of floristic knowledge advancement across the administrative regions of Italy

Article Title: Mapping the advancements in floristic knowledge of Italy (2005–2025)

Article References: Domina, G., Bacchetta, G., Bartolucci, F., D’Antraccoli, M., Peruzzi, L., Stinca, A., Alessandrini, A., Bernardo, L., Boscutti, F., Bouvet, D., Bovio, M., Calvia, G., Cambria, S., Conti, F., Dagnino, D., Del Guacchio, E., Galasso, G., Gigante, D., Di Gristina, E., … Barone, G. (2026). Mapping the advancements in floristic knowledge of Italy (2005–2025). Plant Biosystems, 160(4), Article 213. https://doi.org/10.1007/s44473-026-00207-4

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.1007/s44473-026-00207-4

Keywords: floristics, Italy, vascular flora, biodiversity, endemism, plant taxonomy, biogeography, citizen science, Hieracium, Orchidaceae, conservation, floristic mapping