Karyotypic characterics of several Papaver species in Ardabil province

Five species of Papaver L. genus, belonging to the Papaveraceae family, namely Papaver dubium L., Papaver orientale L., Papaver fugax Poir. (with two subspecies), Papaver glaucum Boiss & Hausskn. and Papaver gaubae Cullen. & Rech. were collected from rangelands across Ardabil province. Several karyotypic characteristics such as long arm, short arm and satellite length were studied then, total length of the chromosomes, long arm to short arm and others characteristics were estimated. Result showed that, there were two types of basic chromosomes numbers, x=4 and x=7. This is the first record of basic chromosome numbers of x=4 observed on Papaver glaucum Boiss & Hausskn. and Papaver gaubae Cullen. & Rech.. The species Papaver fugax Poir. var. fugax Cullen. contained B-chromosome. From evolution point of view, Papaver fugax Poir. var. platydiscus Cullen. was considered as the most asymmetric and thus the most evolved species. The range of total chromosome length was 23.57±0.81 to 7.53±0.64 µm. Analysis of variance showed highly significant differences between the studied species for all of the traits at (a= 0.01). Based on these characteristics, cluster analysis classified the species in four distinct groups.