ISSN 1346-7565 Acta Phytotax. Geobot. 70 (2): 119–127 (2019) doi: 10.18942/apg.201818 Crassula peduncularis and C. saginoides (Crassulaceae), Newly Naturalized in Japan, and their Genetic Differences from C. aquatica 1,* 2 3 3 Shinji Fujii , TadaShi YamaShiro , Sachiko horie and maSaYuki maki 1Department of Environmental Science, University of Human Environments, Okazaki, Aichi, 444-3505, Japan. *
[email protected] (author for correspondence); 2Division of Bioscience and Bioindustry, Graduate School of Technology, Industrial and Social Sciences, Tokushima University, Tokushima 770-8513, Japan; 3Botanical Gardens, Tohoku University, Sendai, Miyagi 980-0862, Japan Recently, we found two species of Crassula newly introduced into central Japan. Based on their mor- phology, we identified them asCrassula peduncularis and C. saginoides, native to the New World. They closely resemble C. aquatica, which is indigenous to Japan. Here, we describe the morphological distinc- tions among the three species in detail. In addition, we examined genetic differences among the three species based on sequence variations in the nuclear ribosomal ITS region and three chloroplast inter- genic regions. Although C. saginoides was considered to be an inland form of C. aquatica and had been treated as a synonym of C. aquatica, the degree of genetic differentiation was relatively large, suggesting that these two taxa should be considered to be independent species. Key words: Crassula aquatica, Crassula peduncularis, Crassula saginoides, genetic differentiation, morphology, naturalized Crassula L. (Crassulaceae) is a large genus of guished from C. aquatica by the pedicels of the mostly terrestrial succulent plants, but also con- former that tend to elongate in fruit while those of tains annual, aquatic or semi-aquatic species the latter remain less than 1 mm long.