Artemisia taurica Willd. var. vanensis Kursat & Civelek (Asteraceae: Anthemideae), a new variety from Eastern Anatolia of Turkey

During our revisionary study on the taxa of the genus Artemisia L. (Asteraceae) distributed in Turkey, we came across two populations that we anticipated could be a new variety of the species Artemisia taurica Willd. belonging to the subgenus Seriphidium (Besser) Fourr. In the morphological and cytological studies, we found that the new variety should be included in the species A. taurica but it also has some considerable morphological differences. These morphological differences include the length of stems, peduncles, pistils, styles, forks of stigmas, stamens, filaments, and dimensions of leaves, phyllaries, corollas, ovaries, anthers, achenes, the direction of synflorescens branches, the orientation of the capitula on the synflorescens branches, colour of corolla, and the type of indumentum. The new variety was also different in terms of chromosome number. Based on these differences, we suggested that a new variety of the species A. taurica should be described, as A. taurica var. vanensis which is only distributed in a very limited area in the Eastern of Turkey. In this article, an identification key for all taxa in the subgenus Seriphidium and a rearranged description of the species A. taurica for including its two varieties, a diagnosis and an identification key for two sister varieties, a distribution map and a few descriptive figures of the new variety have been given.