Revision on western Crataegus spp. using morphological characters and molecular marker

The genus L. Crataegus belongs Rosaceae family. It has economic importance due to its widespread use in traditional medicine and landscaping. This genus has a lot of complexities from a taxonomic point of view and so far many plans have been presented to classify the species of this genus into sections or subgenera. In this study, morphological traits along with ribosomal DNA (ITS) region sequences were used to study the progeny relationships as well as to determine the species boundary in this genus. In morphological studies, 43 traits (14 quantitative traits and 29 qualitative traits) of vegetative and reproductive organs of 14 species of this genus were studied and the obtained data were statistically analyzed by specialized software such as PAST and SPSS. . In phylogenetic studies, the nuclear genomes of 14 species were extracted by DNA Extraction Kit (MBST) and their DNA sequences along with ITS sequences of 19 non-Iranian species of this genus were extracted from NCBI site and then analyzed by PAUP and Figtree softwares were analyzed based on Maximum Parsimony (MP) method. Although the classification of species based on The maximum Parsimony method was consistent with the monograph presented by Christensen, but these results did not confirm the proposed schemes for classifying species in the flora of Iran.