Leaf morphological study of Calotropis procera (Aiton) R.br. in Iran

Calotropis belonged to Apocynaceae, subfamily Asclepiadoideae. Calotropis procera (Aiton) R. Br. is widely distributed in the desert, tropical and subtropicalregions of Africa, Saudi Arabia, East of Afghanistan, Pakistan, West of India also Southern regions Iran. The species is distributed in Sistan-and-Balouchestan, Kerman, Hormozgan, Fars, Khuzestan, and Bushehr provinces. In this study, 54 individuals from 30 populations of Calotropis were collected from different regions of Iran and analyzed using quantitative and qualitative characters such as length and width of the leaf, leaf tip, leaf base, the density of hairs, leaf attachments etc. A total of 22 morphological characters were analyzed using NTSYS software ver.2.2, and a dendrogram was drawn. The results showed that the morphological characters are constantly changing with respect to their geographic distribution, and there is a considerable morphological gap in the leaf characters between Southwestern and other populations

Keywords:

Calotropis , Leaf morphology , Iran