The Origin of Crepis and Related Genera 37 



South Africa. Furthermore, there are central African species 

 which are certainly related to hypochaeridea, and one of these, 

 C. Newii, has just been found to have a genom very similar to 

 that of C. hypochaeridea. The fourth species, Hookeriana, a 

 Moroccan plant of the Grand Adas Mountains, is less closely 

 related to the other three. Of the second group, conyzaefolia is 

 the most primitive species and is distributed from southern 

 Europe to central Asia; the other five, all of eastern Asia, are 

 certainly less primitive. Although the 12-chromosome Catonia 

 species must be regarded as derived from species with some 

 more primitive number or numbers, yet they are fairly primitive 

 types. Their distributional relations are interesting, for paludosa 

 is second only to sibirica in distributional range (western Europe 

 to western Siberia), while its close relative, viscidula, is restricted 

 to the northern Balkan countries. C. J^cishmirica is not closely 

 related to the other two and it must have sprung from a different 

 ancestor or ancestors; as its name indicates, it occurs in the 

 western Himalaya Mountains. From this survey of Catonia, it 

 would appear that the center of origin and distribution of these 

 species must have been in south-central or southwestern Asia. 

 In Eticrepis (fig. 10) the lo-chromosome species comprise 

 three groups, of which the first contains two alpine perennials, 

 C. Raulinii, an endemic of Crete, and C. bithynica, which occurs 

 in northern Asia Minor and the western Balkan Peninsula. The 

 second group comprises C. multicaulis, a much less primitive 

 perennial which is distributed from the western Himalayas to 

 northern Scandinavia, together with sancta and bifida, two an- 

 nuals which are closely related to each other and whose com- 

 bined range is from southwestern Europe to southwestern Asia. 

 The third group contains tingitana, a somewhat primitive 

 perennial of northern Morocco and southwestern Spain which 



