XVI International Botanical Congess

Maximum parsimony employing nrITS and chloroplast intron sequence data from populations of six varieties of Pedicularis bracteosa resulted in three equally parsimonious trees supporting a northern Rocky Mountain/Cascade Range/Olympic Mountain clade and a southern Rocky Mountain clade. Within the former clade, P.b. var. bracteosa (northern Rocky Mountains) and P.b. var. atrosanguinea (Olympic Mountains) were resolved as a sister clade to P.b. var. flavida and var. latifolia (Cascade Range). The southern Rocky Mountain clade consists of a Bitterroot Range clade (P.b. var. siifolia) and a clade including P.b. var. paysoniana from Wyoming and Colorado. Mapping floral characters onto the tree suggests that beaked upper galeas are derived from simple galeas. The biogeographic implications of this phylogeny will also be discussed.