蒙古蒲公英组 meng gu pu gong ying zu

Taraxacum [unranked] Mongolica Dahlstedt, Acta Horti Gothob. 2: 159. 1926.

Plant base whitish arachnoid. Middle leaves usually arachnoid. Petiole unwinged to narrowly winged; leaf blade deeply lobed. Scapes usually arachnoid. Capitulum pointing upward after anthesis. Involucre base rounded. Outer phyllaries 9-17, light green or green, imbricate or not so, linear-lanceolate to ovate, appressed or loosely appressed to erect, usually with distinct venation, almost unbordered or pale bordered, margin usually densely ciliate. Ligules light yellow, yellow, or rarely white. Achene usually pale grayish straw-colored brown, deep brown, straw-colored olivaceous, or rarely reddish, 4-6 × (0.9-)1.1-1.4(-2) mm; body frequently spinulose and tuberculate throughout, usually densely spinulose and squamulose in upper 1/5-1/3, gradually to subabruptly narrowing into a subcylindric to less often subconic 0.7-1.5 mm cone; beak 6-10 mm, thin. Pappus white or yellowish, (4-)6-8 mm.

About 45 species: centered in Japan and NE China; 11 species (nine endemic) in China.

A number of specific names, based on specimens from China belonging to this section, remain unclear.

The names Taraxacum mongolicum var. caninum G. Jacot, T. mongolicum var. laeve G. Jacot, and T. duplex G. Jacot are based on the material collected by G. Jacot in 1927-1928 in "Tsinan" (now Jinan) in Shandong and originally deposited at SCU, later to be transferred to JSPC. The material, however, was destroyed, probably during WWII, and is not extant. Obvious lectotypes for the names are achene figures 1a, 1b, and 1c, respectively (G. Jacot, J. N. China Branch Roy. Asiat. Soc. 61: pl. 1. 1930). As this problem requires further study, the names remain uninterpreted in the present treatment.

Taraxacum ohwianum Kitamura, described from N Korea, was several times reported to occur in China (e.g., FRPS 80(2): 43. 1999). The holotype, depicted in Kitamura (Mem. Coll. Sci. Kyoto Imp. Univ., Ser. B, Biol. 24: pl. III, f. 4. 1957) is no longer extant, and we have to rely on authentic material in KYO. Taraxacum ohwianum is characterized by ovate, broadly pale bordered outer phyllaries and by light straw-colored, 4.5-4.9 × 1.1-1.3 mm achenes, with body densely shortly spinulose above, otherwise usually densely tuberculate, and gradually narrowing into a subcylindric (subconic at base and ± cylindric distally) 1-1.3 mm cone. The closest Chinese taxon (T. albomarginatum, incl. T. mandshuricum) has achenes substantially less densely spinulose, narrower, and cone much shorter, and cannot be equated with T. ohwianum. We failed to find convincing Chinese material belonging to T. ohwianum.

The names Taraxacum antungense Kitagawa (J. Jap. Bot. 22: 173. 1948), T. argutedenticulatum Nakai & Koidzumi (Bot. Mag. (Tokyo) 50: 142. 1936), T. falcilobum Kitagawa (Rep. Inst. Sci. Res. Manchoukuo 2: 312. 1938), T. glaucanthum Nakai & Koidzumi (Bot. Mag. (Tokyo) 50: 91. 1936, not (Ledebour) Candolle, 1838), T. hangchouense Koidzumi (Bot. Mag. (Tokyo) 50: 144. 1936), T. hondae Nakai & Koidzumi (Bot. Mag. (Tokyo) 50: 143. 1936), T. pseudodissectum Nakai & Koidzumi (Bot. Mag. (Tokyo) 50: 92. 1936), and T. urbanum Kitagawa (J. Jap. Bot. 22: 174. 1948) are all based on the material from China collected in the 1930s by Japanese botanists. In spite of a great effort of curators of TI and KYO, and the well-documented type material of H. Koidzumi in TNS, the type material for these names was not found in the collections. All these names, according to their protologues, probably belong to T. sect. Mongolica. As the original material is missing, and the protologue descriptions are not satisfactorily informative, we leave these names for further investigation.