Talk:Sophora
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Been doing a bit of digging - recent research shows that Sophora is paraphyletic, and has been/is being broken up into several genera.
The type species is Sophora tomentosa L. from tropical Asia; the Pacific Ocean species (S. tetraptera, S. microphylla, S. toromiro, etc), sometimes treated in the separate section or genus Edwardsia, are fairly closely related to it and can be retained in Sophora.
The North American S. secundiflora, S. arizonica and S. gypsophila are unrelated to these, though close to Styphnolobium, and are now separated into the genus Calia.
North American S. affine is now Styphnolobium affinis.
A useful paper: Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 146: 439-446 (2004). The relationship of Sophora sect. Edwardsia (Fabaceae) to Sophora tomentosa, the type species of the genus Sophora, observed from DNA sequence data and morphological characters.
A synonym list at Plant Gene Resources of Canada
I'll be editing the relevant page(s) accordingly over the next day to two - MPF 15:31, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
- Good stuff, I've been meaning to do something about this for a while (excuse = busy). You can find a lot more references here from my PhD thesis if you search for Sophora too. I don't think that the three paraphyletic clades have formally been renamed, but they definately should be if you look at the trees. Onco p53 18:05, 15 Jun 2005 (UTC)
