Pollen Morphology of Some Turkish Salvia L. (Lamiaceae: Mentheae) Species

ABSTRACT: In this presented work, the pollen morphologies of twenty-one taxa, nine of them endemic from Turkey, belonging to the genus Salvia (Lamiaceae: sub-family Nepetoideae: tribe Mentheae: sub-tribe Salviinae), S. aethiopis L., S. argentea L., S. aytachii Vural & Adigüzel, S. blepharochlaena Hedge & Hub.-Mor., S. cadmica Boiss., S. ceratophylla L., S. cryptantha Montbret & Aucher, S. frigida Boiss., S. fructicosa Miller, S. halophile Hedge, S. napifolia Jacq., S. microstegia Boiss. & Bal., S. recognita Fisch. & Mey. S. sclarea L., S. smyrnaea Boiss. S. suffruticosa Montbret & Aucher, S. tchihatcheffii (Fisch. & Mey.) Boiss., S. tometosa Bertol, S. verbenaca L., S. viridis L., and S. wiedemanni Boiss. and collected throughout the Turkey, have been intensively studied by using light (LM) and a scanning electron (SEM) microscopy. The objectives of this study are to investigate the pollen morphologies of twenty-one taxa of Turkish Salvia (nine of which are endemic) and to present similar and different characteristics of the taxa. The investigated whole pollen grains had a structure of both isopolar and radial symmetry. Overall, types of aperture were mostly hexacolpate, but it was also determined that the aperture type of S. viridis was both hexacolpate and octacolpate. The pollen grains had characteristic shapes of spheroidal, suboblate, prolate and subprolate. The exine ornamentation was bireticulate and reticulate-perforate. It was determined by the results of palynological studies that pollen morphology changed amongst these studied taxa. As a conclusion, the results of the present study show that palynological characters such as pollen shape, polar axis length (P), equatorial axis length (E), aperture numbers and types and exine ornamentation, exhibit remarkable differences amongst the studied taxa.