POLLEN MORPHOLOGY OF THE SUBFAMILY CORYPHOIDEAE -ARECACEAE (EXCLUDING TRIBE PHOENICEAE) FROM PAKISTAN AND KASHMIR

The pollen morphological diversity of the family Arecaceae has been widely demonstrated, and foregoing studies have revealed that pollen characters may contribute to a better understanding of the systematics of taxa. The present study was carried out to examine the pollen morphological characters of 14 species representing 12 genera of the subfamily Coryphoideae (excluding the tribe Phoeniceae) by using Light microscope (LM) and Scanning electron Microscope (SEM). In general, the pollen throughout the subfamily is monosulcate and elliptic in apertural view. However, the differences are found in the pollen size (ranges from 13.50 um to 51.00 um), exine thickness (i.e., from 1.0 um to 3.0 um), exine pattern (either supra tectal gemmae present or absent) and the number of baculae (i.e., one, two or more). Pollen characters have been found to be taxonomically useful for characterization of the genera. Therefore, on the basis of the combination of pollen morphological characters four pollen types have been recognized such as Bismarkia-type, Borassus-type, Braheatype and Sabal type. The pollen morphological data (quantitative and qualitative) have also been analyzed by Agglomerative cluster analysis choosing the Euclidean distance and Ward's method for a group linkage method.