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Athamanta turbith (L.) Brot.
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A calciphile species split into some subspecies and having also some closely related species. which are very hard to differentiate. The so called endemic ssp. hungarica (Borbas) Tutin from the south-western Romanian Carpathians is mentioned also from Serbia (see the text below) and is said to be almost undifferentiable from the plants considered as ssp. haynaldii (Borbas et R. Uechtr.) Tutin in the Dinarians. Interesting are the following remarks of dr. Bostjan Surina from Slovenia in regarding this species (considerations extracted from private e-mail correspondence): "I tried to dwelve a bit into the problematic and found that Athamanta turbith (basyonim is perhaps A. matthioli) has less in common with A. haynaldii than A. cretensis does. I am living in the Liburnian karst, a triple boundary of the genus: A.turbith, A. cretensis and A. haynaldii (plus another taxon, previously treated as A. mutellinoides but there are still many unanswered questions) and have plenty of field experience with the plants. The real crux botanicorum is to differentiate A. cretensis (var. mutellinoides?) with A. haynaldii. I was trying to solve the mistery some years ago but put the case aside for the time being (actually I started to move around again). It was interesting to go through Borbas's papers realising he had a lot of troubles (e.g., changing his mind from paper to paper), proving that the Athamanta taxonomy is a tough nut to crack. It would be interesting to compare the specimens from the Carpathians with the one from the Dinarian Alps. During the years I've collected a decent sample across the Alps and Dinaric Mountains covering both the taxa and the area. I only experienced what the Serbian botanists call A. haynaldii ssp. hungarica in the vicinity of Djerdap. However, I am not sure whether or not those plants are significantly different from the Albanian, Montenegrin, Bosnian and Croatian ones". T "The two taxa (ssp. haynaldii and ssp. hungarica) are indeed very close. I was not able to differentiate the plants from, e.g., Djerdap near Danube, from the plants of the Adriatic Mountains." Pictures taken from outside Romania, in Croatia, Ucka Mountain, Liburnian Karst mountainous area. According to the author, the plant shown below belongs to the typical species. dr. Bostjan Surina, bostjan.surina@prirodoslovni.com
Pictures taken from outside Romania, in Croatia, Velebit Mountain, Dinarian Alps. According to the author the plants in the pictures below belong to ssp. haynaldii (Borb. et R. Uechtr.) Tutin. dr. Bostjan Surina, bostjan.surina@prirodoslovni.com
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