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Erythronium dens-canis L.
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The single species of this genus from Europe, it is a part of a very ancient evolutionary branch totally dedicated to the nemoral, subtropical and much rarer, to the boreal forests of the temperate northern hemisphere. Most of the species are located in western North America (see also here and here the distributional maps from the Biota of North America atlas) while the vicariant taxa of the European one in the rest of Palearctis are Erythronium sibiricum and Erythronium japonicum. The latter one however is quite different from the whole rest of the genus. The Caucasian species, Erythronium caucasicum is quite doubtfully distinguishable from our European one. Erythronium caucasicum seemingly is closely related to the Romanian endemic Erythronium dens-canis ssp. niveum which occurs in many forests from Oltenia. The three taxa in the eastern North America, Erythronium americanum, Erythronium albidum, Erythronium mesochoreum are very closely related and vicariant to Erythronium dens-canis and Erythronium sibiricum.. The story of this species is a nice one of a long-time evolution in a huge vegetational belt which provided a quite constant environment in the Miocene and Pliocene but which also suffered dramatic shape / area transformations during the Pleistocene.This genus is also the closest relative of Tulipa, the tulips, which are mostly related to steppe and forest-steppe habitats from the Palearctis. The story of the environmental and geographical splitting between the two genera should be very interesting also. Here also is an article related to the pollen and an interesting biogeographical story of the genus based on ITS sequences. Between Moldovenesti and Pietroasa, Cluj county, on 28th of March 2010 dr. Alexandru Badarau, alexandru@transsilvanica.com
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