CHROMOSOME NUMBERS OF RUBUS SPECIES IN SOUTHWEST CHINA

China is a major center of diversity for the genus Rubus, the majority of which are concentrated in two major subgenera, Idaeobatus (83 sp.) and Malachobatus (84 sp.). Many of these Chinese species are little-known outside of their distributional regions.
In order to gain more knowledge about some of these species, the Nanjing Botanical Garden, PRC, the Guizhou Botanical Garden, PRC, and the USDA National Clonal Germplasm Repository sponsored a plant exploration trip to Guizhou Province in 1992. The objectives were:1) to obtain information about the species; their geographic distribution, ecological sites, and plant characteristics as observed in the field, (2) to prepare herbarium specimens, (3) to collect seed samples, and (4) to obtain flower buds for cytological studies.
We prepared herbarium specimens from 55 species but, because of the extremely wide range in fruiting time (May to November), during the expedition (7 weeks in May-June and 3 weeks in September-October) seeds were available from only about 33 species, and young buds were obtained from only 21 species.

This report presents our chromosome counts of some of these Guizhou species and of other Chinese species, and summarizes published counts of all Chinese Rubus species.
Thus far, Idaeobatus species are, with one exception, diploid (2n=14) and Malachobatus species are polyploid (2n=4x, 6x, and 8x).

VI International Symposium on Rubus and Ribes

M.M. Thompson, C.M. Zhao

Rosaceae, Idaeobatus, Malachobatus, cytology, raspberry, blackberry

https://doi.org/10.17660/ActaHortic.1993.352.71