TAXONOMIC STUDIES IN WALL BARLEY (HORDEUM-MURINUM) AND SEA BARLEY (HORDEUM-MARINUM) .1. CHARACTER INVESTIGATION - ASSESSMENT OF NEW AND TRADITIONAL CHARACTERS

In the literature about 60 taxa have been described at various taxonomic levels in the wall barley - sea barley group. Considerably less confusion exists between wall and sea barley than within. It appears that 5 taxa have been recognized and are likely to be valid, but there has been disagreement as to their status. New micromorphologic characters were investigated and reexamined and critically defined traditional characters of material collected throughout the area of the natural habitats of the group. Characters taken from the seed epiblast and the floral lodicules were found useful for conclusively distinguishing between H. murinum (s.l.), H. glaucum and H. marinum (s.l.). Exploratory data analysis of 35 other characters investigated supports this distinction. Thus, in this particular paper 3 taxa are tentatively recognized. In the subsequent paper the validity of the 3 taxa will be testd by numerical analysis and furthermore the possibility of 5 taxa will be investigated and similarly tested.