The genus Tamarix (Tamaricaceae) in Sicily: first contribution

Tamarix L. is a critical genus of the Italian vascular flora and it is characterized by a considerable morphological and ecological resemblance of taxa, infraspecific variability and teratology of floral elements. The number of floral parts is sometimes constant but this parameter cannot be considered valid for any identification of specimens when it is not correlated with the position of flowers on the raceme, the reciprocal position of floral parts, the variability in their numbers, etc. The difficulties in the identification of tamarisk species are sometimes caused by inaccurate descriptions and by problems in analytical keys. According to Willdenow (1816), Desvaux (1824), Ehrenberg (1872), Bunge (1852) and Ahrendt (1926), 200 specific and intraspecific taxa are included in the genus Tamarix. This number was reduced to 69 (54 species and 15 varieties) by Baum (1978). Baum (1968), Zangheri (1976) and Pignatti (1982) reported 5 taxa for Italy: Tamarix africana Poiret, T. canariensis Willd., T. gallica L., T. dalmatica Baum and T. parviflora DC. Recently Conti et al. (2005) in the “Annotated Check-list of the Italian Vascular Flora” added 5 tamarisk species collected in Sardinia by De Martis et al. (1984): T. arborea (Sieb. ex Ehrenb.) Bge., T. hampeana Boiss. & Heldr. emend. Boiss., T. passerinoides Delile and T. tetragyna Pall. ex M. Bieb. The main objective of this work was to survey the tamarisk flora of Sicily and to revise the herbarium specimens from Sicily in order to provide new ecological and distributive data.