''Pappobolus'' is a genus of

flowering plant Flowering plants are plants that bear flowers and fruits, and form the clade Angiospermae (), commonly called angiosperms. The term "angiosperm" is derived from the Greek words ('container, vessel') and ('seed'), and refers to those plants th ...

in the family

Asteraceae The family Asteraceae, alternatively Compositae, consists of over 32,000 known species of flowering plants in over 1,900 genera within the order Asterales. Commonly referred to as the aster, daisy, composite, or sunflower family, Compositae w ...

native to the Andes Mountains of

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Ecuador Ecuador ( ; ; Quechua: ''Ikwayur''; Shuar: ''Ecuador'' or ''Ekuatur''), officially the Republic of Ecuador ( es, República del Ecuador, which literally translates as "Republic of the Equator"; Quechua: ''Ikwadur Ripuwlika''; Shuar: ''Eku ...

, and

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. ''Pappobolus'' is distinguished from closely related genera by its combination of shrubby habit and usually caducous pappus. Within the genus there is considerable variation in the pappus, a structure that has traditionally been considered a key to defining genera in Asteraceae, and this led to earlier confusion in defining the genus. Most of the species of the genus were originally described as members of ''Helianthus'', based on having a pappus of two caducous awns. When it was recognized that they were not part of the exclusively North American ''Helianthus'', they were transferred to a genus called ''Helianthopsis''. The prominent synantherologist

S.F.Blake Sidney Fay Blake (1892–1959) was an American botanist and plant taxonomist, "recognized as one of the world's experts on botanical nomenclature." Biography Blake was born in 1892 in Stoughton, Massachusetts. In 1912, he received a bachelor's d ...

, however, much earlier named the genus ''Pappobolus'' based on species that have a pappus of numerous caducous awns. It was only during the work of Panero on the genus that the congeneric nature of plants of the two pappus types was recognized, and this has subsequently been supported by both molecular phylogenetic studies and phytochemical analyses. Subsequent studies have shown that the genus is related to members of the subtribe Helianthinae that occur in

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, and it is likely that migration into

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only occurred following the closure of the Panamanian land bridge about 3 million years ago.Schilling, E. E., J. L. Panero, and U. H. Eliasson. 1994. Evidence from DNA restriction site analysis on the relationships of ''Scalesia'' (Asteraceae: Heliantheae). American Journal of Botany 81: 248—254. Thus, the genus has exhibited an amazing burst of radiation in producing the relatively large number of species, a result in part that reflects the highly dissected montane

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of the Andean region. Species accepted by the

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as of December 2022:

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q7133103 Asteraceae genera Flora of South America Taxonomy articles created by Polbot