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• Historical occurrence of Spergularia echinosperma, a rare Nanocyperion species in Hungary

  3–9

  Attila Mesterházy

  Pavel Kúr

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  Three species of the genus Spergularia have been known from Hungary. The most widespread one, Spergularia rubra (L.) J. Presl et C. Presl occurs on young sandy fallow fields and other disturbed habitats.  The other species, S. marina (L.) Bess. and S. media (L.) C. Presl, occur sporadically in saline grasslands, and both have been recently spreading along salted roads. During a revision of the genus Spergularia in Hungarian herbaria, specimens of the species S. echinosperma (Čelak.) Asch. et Graebn. were found. It is a rare species previously known to occur only in Czechia and Germany and to be extinct in Austria and Slovakia (a few occurrences along the Morava and Danube rivers between 1909 and 1953). However, it was recently discovered in Western Siberia and Kazakhstan. It is a typical mudflat plant that occurs on exposed sandy shores of water bodies. Two herbarium sheets collected by Gyula Tauscher from near the village of Ercsi (riverbank of the Danube) in 1903 were found in the Carpato-Pannonicum collection of the Hungarian Natural History Museum. In addition, a new specimen was found, collected in Slovakia (Danube near Šamorín, collected by Mihály Résely in 1868) at the vicinity of the Hungarian border. The species was not confirmed during a field inspection of the target localities in Hungary; therefore, we have to consider it extinct in the country as well as in the whole Pannonian Basin. Recently, S. echinosperma was split into two subspecies – subsp. echinosperma and subsp. albensis. The subsp. echinosperma is probably restricted to fishponds in the SW part of Czechia and subsp. albensis occurs mainly in the floodplains of the river Elbe in Germany. The extinct populations of S. echinosperma in the Pannonian Basin belonged to the subsp. albensis. This taxon is morphologically close to S. rubra but can be reliably distinguished by densely verrucose seeds and shorter than wide stipules.