Aquilegia gegica is a species of flowering plant in the genus Aquilegia (columbine) in the family Ranunculaceae endemic to the western South Caucasus region in Abkhazia and Georgia.[1] The plant's flower petals are light blue.
Description
Aquilegia gegica is a perennial plant.[1] The pubescence of the plant gives it a greyish appearance. Leaves on the lower portion of the stem are double trifoliate. There are leaves further up the stem. It has long petals that are light blue. The nectar spurs possess a funnel shape and transition from blue in the upper portion to whitish at the lower end.[2]: 103 The plant prefers temperate environments.[1]
Taxonomy
Aquilegia gegica was received its binomial when it was first described in 1953 by Vitta Savelievna Jabrova-Kolakovskaja in the Zametki po Sistematike i Geografii Rastenii. The type locality for the species is Abkhazia, the valley the Gega river.[2]: 103
A. gegica is capable of producing fertile hybrid offspring with Aquilegia colchica, another Aquilegia species endemic to the western Caucasus.[2]: 103
Distribution
It is native to the western Transaucasus region of the western Caucasus.[1] The plant can be found in Abkhazia and Georgia.[2]: 103 Like A. colchina and Aquilegia kubanica, A. gegica is endemic in the Caucasus; the only other Caucasian Aquilegia, Aquilegia olympica, has a substantially more expansive range.[3]
Conservation
As of 2024, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, utilizing the Angiosperm Extinction Risk Predictions v1, predicts that Aquilegia gegica is a "threatened" species with a confidence level of "confident".[1]
Cultivation
Botanist Robert Nold, in his 2003 book Columbines, said that he was unaware of any information regarding A. gegica besides its appearance on a website dedicated to endangered plants from Georgia.[4] The National Botanical Garden of Georgia has cultivated A. gegica derived from plants present on the Egrisi Ridge in the Chkhorotsqu Municipality in 2016.[2]: 103
References
- ^ a b c d e "Aquilegia gegica Jabr.-Kolak". Plants of the World Online. Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. Retrieved December 7, 2024.
- ^ a b c d e "Biological Peculiarities of F1 Generation of Hybrids of Two Georgian Endemic Species Aquilegia colchica Kem.-Nath. and Aquilegia gegica Jabr.-Kolak" (PDF). Bulletin of the Georgian National Academy of Sciences. 15 (2). 2021.
- ^ Vassiljeva, Irina Mikhailovna (1991). "Aquilegia kubanica (Ranunculaceae) - Новый Вид с Кавказа" [Aquilegia kubanica (Ranunculaceae) - A New Species from the Caucasus]. Botanicheskiĭ Zhurnal (in Russian) (12): 1765–1768. ISSN 0006-8136.
- ^ Nold, Robert (2003). Columbines: Aquilegia, Paraquilegia, and Semiaquilegia. Portland, OR: Timber Press. p. 106. ISBN 0881925888 – via Internet Archive.
Further reading
- Nardi, Enio (2015). Il genere Aquilegia L. (Ranunculaceae). Polistampa. ISBN 9788859615187.
