XVI International Botanical Congess

The Artemisia ludoviciana complex is a widely distributed group of herbaceous perennial species that occur in western North America from the Aleutian Islands to Jalisco in Central Mexico, which includes approximately 18 taxa. Evolutionary relationships within the group are unresolved due to continuous variation within the complex, perhaps as a result of hybridization and polyploidy. We are sequencing the ITS and ETS ribosomal DNA from diploid taxa for phylogenetic analysis. This phylogeny is being compared to a morphologically-based phylogeny that includes the polyploid taxa to resolve relationships within the complex, and to understand the evolution of polyploidy.