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In this study, we report the current palynological characteristics of Iberis taxa naturally distributed in Turkey. The pollen morphology of 10 native Iberis taxa was investigated across 35 populations. In the light of a reviewed taxonomical study on Turkish Iberis taxa, a detailed palynological description was provided for the genus. The palynological characteristics of Iberis taxa were examined by using scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and light microscopy (LM) to verify and confirm their diagnostic importance at a specific and/or generic level. We evaluated different characteristics including polar axis, equatorial axis, colpus length and width, Amb diameter, apocolpium, exine structure, and sculpture. Pollen characteristics were measured on 30 pollen grains from each specimen under light microscopy (LM). Detailed exine sculpture was also analyzed under scanning electron microscopy (SEM). Generally, the pollen grains of the genus Iberis are small to medium sized, radially symmetrical, isopolar, spheroidal, almost tricolpate, and rarely syncolpate or tetracolpate. The exine sculpture is reticulate, and the structure is semitectate. Two pollen types for the genus were identified based on the colpus surface feature: Iberis type-I (with non-ornamented colpus surface) and Iberis type-II (with ornamented colpus surface). Principal component analysis and cluster analysis were performed to reveal patterns and groupings within the related taxa concerning pollen morphology. It was found that pollen size may provide a limited but valuable metric to distinguishing Iberis species. However, due to the wide variation in some populations, it would be useful to have palynological data as well as chromosomal, molecular and macro-micromorphological data to resolve the complexity in the taxonomy of the genus.
Çilden et al. (Tue,) studied this question.