SOME PROBLEMS FROM THE SYSTEMATICS OF THE GENUS PRUNUS L.

For a long time a lot of botanists have been concerned with the systematics of the genus Prunus L. (including the genus Amygdalus L.) which contains about 200 – or perhaps more species.
They have taken interest in it not only because of the richness and variety of the taxonomic units classed here and their importance for horticulture, but also because of the difficulty in the delimitation of smaller systematic units.

Our purpose is not a discussion of some of the former systematic classifications worked out by such botanists as: Linne, Miller, Moench, Lamarok, Persoon, Lambert, Koch, Webb, Bentham and Hooker, Heldreich, Koehne, Focke, Schneider, Ingram – but a critical comparison of the three most often nowadays applied classifications that are found in the nowadays used basic handbooks on dendrology according to the authors: A.Rehder (1927), C.I.Sokolow (1954) and G.Grüssmann (1962). Rehder and Krussmann number an overwhelming majority of species from the subfamily Prunoideae Focke among the genus Prunus L. (besides a few ones numbered among the genera Maddenia, Osmaronia and Prinsepia). They divide that genus into several subgenera and sections.
The classifications by Rehder and Krüssmann are typical taxonomic ones.
Sokolow has applied a rather practical classification, approaching to the classification by Miller; he has divided the genus Prunus within the meaning of Rehder or Krüssmann into several separate genera.

A genealogical tree has been created after and analysis of morphological features of the species from the genus Prunus L. (sensu latissimo) had been carried, G.Krüssmann’s

Symposium of Working Group on Plum Genetics and Plum Breeding

B. SEKOWSKI

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1968.10.4