A taxonomic study of the Lotus corniculatus complex in Turkey

A combination of morphology, chromosome number, and elevation is presently employed to circumscribe and identify the "species" Lotus corniculatus s. str., L. tenuis, and L. alpinus. Ordination analysis of morphological characters indicated continuity of variation. Moreover, moderate correlations were found between most of the characters examined and altitude, suggesting that variation was clinal rather than discontinuous. To examine the relationship between altitude and the taxa, the plants were initially grouped using only altitude as a criterion variable, lowland, moderate altitude, and upper altitude groups, respectively, representing L. tenuis, L. corniculatus, and L. alpinus. Iterative canonical analysis of the morphological data was used to refine the composition of these, and the resulting groups indeed proved to correspond to traditional conceptions of the three taxa. Because more than 40% of the morphological variation useful for discriminating these was explainable simply by the altitudinal grad...