Welcome to Pericallis (Asteraceae) Scratchpad

Pericallis (Senecioneae, Asteraceae) is a monophyletic genus endemic to the biogeographic region of Macaronesia. Nordenstam (1974) highlighted the need for a taxonomic revision of the genus and putative new species have since been identified (Panero et al, 1999; Jones et al. 2014). The genus has a distribution spanning the oceanic archipelagos of the Canaries, Madeira and the Azores in Macaronesia, no species occurs on more than one archipelago.

A taxonomic revision of Pericallis was part of the PhD thesis of Katy Jones, based at the Natural History Museum (NHM, London) with the University of Bristol (UoB), supervised by Mark Carine and is submitted to Willdenowia for publication (Jones, K., Reyes-Betancort, A. and Carine, M. et al. in review). Fourteen species are recognized and two new subspecies are described in the taxonomic revision. This work has been part of a collaboration with a number of other researchers and institutions: F. Rumsey (Natural History Museum, London), M. Padrón-Mederos and A. Santos-Guerra (Jardín de Aclimatación de La Oratava), R. Mesa (Gesplan, Tenerife, Spain), M. Sequeira and R. Jardim (University of Madeira), J. Caujapé–Castells, R. Jaen-Molina, J. Soto-Medin, A. Marrero and M. Olangua Corral (Jardín Botánico Canario "Viera y Clavijo"), M. Moura, L. Silva and J. Martins, (University of the Azores, Sao Miguel), and A. Mills (National Trust, UK).

We are grateful for funding for field and lab work from the Natural History Museum, London and we would like to thank The Royal Horticultural Society and the Society of Biology for further financial contributions towards field work.