TITLE Notes on allozyme variation in Lycoris radiata (Amaryllidaceae) from Korea
AUTHOR Myong Gi Chung
Department of Biology, Gyeongsang National University, Chinju 660-701, The Republic of Korea
FULL TEXT [in HTML format] [in PDF format]
ABSTRACT Lycoris radiata (L'Her) Herb. var. radiata, a herbaceous perennial and sterile triploid (2n = 33), grows in moist places in Japan (except Hokkaido), Korea, China, and Nepal. Several botanists have speculated that the taxon originated in China and was introduced into Japan. In Korea, the taxon is routinely found in the streamsides near temples in the southern regions. Allozyme analysis was conducted in eight Korean populations of L. radiata var. radiata as well as in one Korean population of L. chinensis Traub. (2n =16) to estimate levels of allozyme diversity. Lycoris radiata var. radiata was monomorphic at all 24 allozyme loci surveyed whereas L. chinesis was polymorphic at 19% of the 21 loci analyzed with 0.06 gene diversity. The results strongly indicated that only one or a few bulbs of L. radiata var. radiata were introduced from China or, secondarily, Japan to a temple in Korea and were then naturalized in the southern Korean peninsula via a strong vegetative reproduction by the rapid formation of new bulbs.
KEYWORD Allozyme; Korea; Lycoris chinensis; L. radiata var. radiata; Naturalization; Sterile triploid;
ARTICLE INFO Botanical Bulletin of Academia Sinica, Volume 40 Number 3 July 1999, page 227-230, 4 pages
PUBLISHER Institute of Plant and Microbial Biology, Academia Sinica, Taipei, Taiwan, Republic of China