Sexuality and Apomixis in Taraxacum

Abstract

UNTIL 1949, the available evidence indicated that species of Taraxacum in the Mediterranean region and in Asia were sexual, and that those in north, west and central Europe were apomictic (apart from two small sexual populations in Sweden and Switzerland). In 1949, Tschermak-Woess¹ discovered sexual plants in apomictic populations in south Austria and these have been further studied by Fürnkranz^2–4. He established the rule that sexual plants are diploid and apomictic plants polyploid (although Sörensen and Gudjonsson⁵ had shown that plants with (3n−1) chromosomes may show sexuality).