email query - anyone know the answer?

[mark smyth]

Hi Mark
I was interested in your publication of a resume of chromosome numbers in Galanthus.  I am curious about the status of Galanthus reginae-olgae, and G. r-o ssp vernalis.  We have a house in the south of Greece and frequently visit colonies of G. reginae-olgae in the wild.   There appear to be different plants in our area of the Tayetos mountains that flower in October – March, and my suspicion is that this is just a variable characteristic.   
I wonder if it is possible to pinpoint G. reg-olg by DNA? It would be interesting to know if chromosome differences could be found between the species and its ssp.
Do you have a contact who might know?

[Oakwood]

you'll find ploidy level for all Galanthus species here:
Zonneveld BJM, Grimshaw JM, Davis AP (2003) The systematic value of nuclear DNA content in Galanthus. Plant Systematics and Evolution 241, 89-102.

[Maggi Young]

Is this any use?   http://data.kew.org/cvalues/

http://data.kew.org/cvalues/CvalServlet?querytype=1

[Martin Baxendale]

The standard chromosome count for all galanthus species is 2n=24, only increasing in the case of polyploid forms (e.g. diploid elwesii has 2n = 24, tertraploid elwesi has 2n= 48) so it would not be possible to differentiate reginae-olgae and r-o vernalis on the basis of chromosome counts as both have the same number of chromosomes.

The only way is to use flow cytometry to find the amount of nuclear DNA, which does vary from one species to another. This is what Zonneveld did in the study suggested by Dimitri - The Systematic Value of Nuclear DNA Content in Galanthus. But r-o and r-o vernalis have very similar nuclear DNA content, so it would be virtually impossible to confirm their different identitites based on this, plus it's a complicated labortatory procedure.

DNA content studies do suggest (not surprisingly) that vernalis is likely to be an intermediate between nivalis and r-o.