Morphological and Molecular differentiation between Quercus petraea (Matt.) Liebl. and Quercus pubescens Willd. (Fagaceae) in Northern and Central Italy.

Q. petraea (Matt.) Liebl. and Q. pubescens Willd. are two closely related taxa: no specific single markers have been found until now neither in their morpology nor in their genome. In the present study morphoanatomical and molecular traits (Simple Sequence Repeats = SSR loci) were investigated into the attempt to characterize and to discriminate these two oak species. At the morphological level the applied statistics (nested ANOVA and discriminant analysis) suggest that the micromorpological features are the most effective for this purpose. The wide ranging of macromorphological variation observed can confound the classification of many individuals into either Q. petraea and Q. pubescens. Analysis of microsatellite data indicates that most of genetic variation is contained within rather than between species. The lack of molecular divergence could be attribuited to either relatively rapid and recent differentiation or to extensive hybridization following secondary contact of the taxa.