Systematic Studies Of The Genus Crypsis

There are different opinions about the phylogenetic classification of genus Crypsis. William Aiton established genus Crypsis in 1789, and Hitchcock & Chase put this genus in tribe Agrostideae, but Pilger (1956) considered Crypsis as a genus of tribe Sporobolinae. Watson & Dallwitz (1992) put Crypsis in Chlorideae, Wu et.(2003)set this genus in the subtribe Sporoboleae of tribe Eragrostideae and the same genus was put in the subtribe Sporoboleae of tribe Sporoboleae which was described in Flora Reipublicae Popularis Sinicae. Zhang regarded this genus as a member of tribe Eragrostideae. Nevertheless, Cripsis was layed in tribe Sporoboleae in Flora of herbage in Northeast.Therefore, The classification of genus Crypsis still needs further research.Light microscopes are used to examine foliar epidermal features and caryopsis shape of some subfamilies of Poaceae, such as the shape of long cell, the short cell, silica-bodies and stomatal subsidiary cell, having micro-hairs, prickle-hairs and papillae or not, the shape of Solid figure, hila ,Ventro-surface, the Embryo ratio, having Flower plinth or not, and the Mode of Caryopsis compression. Through the study, we found the genus Sporobolus was relative to the genus Crypsis and was distant to the genus Muhlenbergia , so we combined these two genera as a distinct tribe-Sporobolinae which was in subfamily Eragrostoideae and we departed the genus Muhlenbergia from this tribe.Using Dendrocalamus latiflorus and Phyllostachys glauca as outgroup,this paper determines the ITS sequence and trnL-F sequence of the genus Crypsis and the related genera of the subfamily Eragrostideae (including some data from Genbank). The result indicated that the subfamily Eragrostideae was not monophyletic and the genus Eragrostis was paraphyletic to the other genera of the subfamily Eragrostideae and the genus Crypsis clustered with genus Sporobolus and Spartina as a clade. Khidir W. Hilu &Lawrence A. Alice(2001)studied the phylogeny of the tribe Chloridoideae and indicated that the subtribe Sporoboleae was polyphyletic and the genus Muhlenbergia was not monophyletic. However, this paper didn't involve the genus Crypsis and referred to the most genera of Eragrostideae. Similarly, the genus Sporobolus clusterd with genus Spartina. Therefore, our data hold out the treatment of combining the two genera Crypsis and Sporobolus as tribe Sporoboleae.But as for the inner relationship of these three genera, it was needed more evidence to clarify.To sum up, this article hold out that genus crypsis and genus Sporobolus should be combined as a tribe Sporobolinae, and genus Muhlenbergia should be moved from this tribe, which was consistant with the viewpoint of Peterson et al. (1995,1997), and was disagreed with the view of Hitchcock & Chase , Pilger (1956) , Gould & Shaw (1983),Clayton &Renvoize (1986),Valdes-Reyna & Hatch(1991),Flora Reipublicae Popularis Sinicae and Wu et.(2003. At last, we do consider Eragrostideae as paraphyletic .