''Pappobolus'' is a genus of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (). The term angiosperm is derived from the Ancient Greek, Greek words (; 'container, vessel') and (; 'seed'), meaning that the seeds are enclosed with ...

in the family

Asteraceae Asteraceae () is a large family (biology), family of flowering plants that consists of over 32,000 known species in over 1,900 genera within the Order (biology), order Asterales. The number of species in Asteraceae is rivaled only by the Orchi ...

native to the

Andes Mountain The Andes ( ), Andes Mountains or Andean Mountain Range (; ) are the longest continental mountain range in the world, forming a continuous highland along the western edge of South America. The range is long and wide (widest between 18°S ...

s of

Colombia Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia, is a country primarily located in South America with Insular region of Colombia, insular regions in North America. The Colombian mainland is bordered by the Caribbean Sea to the north, Venezuel ...

Ecuador Ecuador, officially the Republic of Ecuador, is a country in northwestern South America, bordered by Colombia on the north, Peru on the east and south, and the Pacific Ocean on the west. It also includes the Galápagos Province which contain ...

, and

Peru Peru, officially the Republic of Peru, is a country in western South America. It is bordered in the north by Ecuador and Colombia, in the east by Brazil, in the southeast by Bolivia, in the south by Chile, and in the south and west by the Pac ...

. ''Pappobolus'' is distinguished from closely related genera by its combination of shrubby habit and usually caducous pappus. Within the genus there is considerable variation in the pappus, a structure that has traditionally been considered a key to defining genera in Asteraceae, and this led to earlier confusion in defining the genus. Most of the species of the genus were originally described as members of ''Helianthus'', based on having a pappus of two caducous awns. When it was recognized that they were not part of the exclusively North American ''Helianthus'', they were transferred to a genus called ''Helianthopsis''. The prominent synantherologist

S.F.Blake Sidney Fay Blake (1892–1959) was an American botanist and plant taxonomist, "recognized as one of the world's experts on botanical nomenclature." Biography Blake was born in 1892 in Stoughton, Massachusetts. In 1912, he received a bachelor's d ...

, however, much earlier named the genus ''Pappobolus'' based on species that have a pappus of numerous

caducous Dehiscence is the splitting of a mature plant structure along a built-in line of weakness to release its contents. This is common among fruits, anthers and sporangia. Sometimes this involves the complete detachment of a part. Structures that op ...

awns. It was only during the work of Panero on the genus that the congeneric nature of plants of the two pappus types was recognized, and this has subsequently been supported by both molecular phylogenetic studies and phytochemical analyses. Subsequent studies have shown that the genus is related to members of the subtribe Helianthinae that occur in

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

, and it is likely that migration into

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a considerably smaller portion in the Northern Hemisphere. It can also be described as the southern Subregion#Americas, subregion o ...

only occurred following the closure of the Panamanian land bridge about 3 million years ago.Schilling, E. E., J. L. Panero, and U. H. Eliasson. 1994. Evidence from DNA restriction site analysis on the relationships of ''Scalesia'' (Asteraceae: Heliantheae). American Journal of Botany 81: 248—254. Thus, the genus has exhibited an amazing burst of radiation in producing the relatively large number of species, a result in part that reflects the highly dissected

montane Montane ecosystems are found on the slopes of mountains. The alpine climate in these regions strongly affects the ecosystem because temperatures lapse rate, fall as elevation increases, causing the ecosystem to stratify. This stratification is ...

topography Topography is the study of the forms and features of land surfaces. The topography of an area may refer to the landforms and features themselves, or a description or depiction in maps. Topography is a field of geoscience and planetary sci ...

of the Andean region. Species accepted by the

Plants of the World Online Plants of the World Online (POWO) is an online taxonomic database published by the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. History Following the Convention on Biological Diversity, the Royal Botanic Gardens in Kew launched Plants of the World Online i ...

as of December 2022:

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q7133103 Asteraceae genera Flora of western South America Taxonomy articles created by Polbot Taxa named by Sidney Fay Blake