Determination of taxonomic characteristics of some astragalus L. taxa

The Astragalus L.genus, belonging to the Papilionoideae subfamily of the Fabaceae family, is an important plant group with a very wide distribution area. Our country, especially the Eastern Anatolia Region, is one of the important distribution centers of the Astragalus genus, and the taxonomic investigation of this genus is of great importance. Within the scope of this thesis, the anatomical, morphological and palynological features of 16 Astragalus taxa naturally distributed in our country were examined in detail. In the anatomical examinations, no significant differences were found between the taxa, and the anatomical features of some species were introduced to the literature for the first time with this study. In the morphological examinations, in addition to the descriptive characters found in the Flora of Turkey; new characters such as boat, winglet, stamen, pistil length, ovary length, and stamen status were determined by us. Thus, important characters belonging to some taxa were determined for the first time. Within the scope of palynological studies, pollen grains of taxa were examined with both light microscope and scanning electron microscope (SEM); and were evaluated in terms of features such as pollen shape, aperture type and ornamentation. Although the pollen grains of taxa were generally similar, it was determined that 10 taxa had subprolate pollen, 5 had prolate pollen and 1 had prolate-spheroidal pollen. It was determined that all taxa had aperture type trizonocolporate ornamentation, reticulate and microreticulate structure. With this study, anatomical, morphological and palynological features of some taxa belonging to the genus Astragalus were systematically presented for the first time and it is thought that the findings obtained will provide basic data for future scientific studies.