CROSSING EXPERIMENTS IN ELYMUS TRANSHYR• CANUS GROUP, A NEW SUBSPECIES AND A NEW SPECIES

Elymus transhyrcanus is a variable species in Iran. Tufted and not tufted populations of this species occur in Alborz mountain chains. A disjunct locality of the species was found in W. Iran. Crossing experiments were made between different morphological and geographical variants. In spite of habit difference between the accessions from N. Iran, tufted or not tufted, they gave hybrids with high pollen fertility and high chiasmata frequency in meiotic metaphase I. Hybrids between the accessions from N. and W. Iran, showed low pollen fertility and relatively low chiasmata frequency. Based on morphological differences and crossing expeiments data, E. transhyrcanus subsp. lorestanicus is described as a new subspecies for W. Iranian material. Elymus zagricus is described as a new species from W. Iran. The new species is related to E. transhyrcanus and E. libanoticus. It differs from both of them by having ciliate glumes and lemma.

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