1. INTRODUCTION
The Artemisia L. is of the largest genera in the tribe
Anthemideae Cass. of the family Asteraceae Dumort., comprises 550
species distributed in the Northern Hemisphere (Mungalov, 2004; Beer,
2005; Boyko, 2011; Vakulenko et al., 2020) with aromatic herbaceous
plant, subshrubs, or shrubs (Al‑Ajmi et al., 2021). Taxa of the genusArtemisia are usually utilized in folk and modern medicine for
curing illnesses like malaria, hepatitis, cancer, and infections induced
by fungi, bacteria, and viruses (Willcox, 2009; Abad et al., 2012;
Al‑Ajmi et al., 2021). The genus Artemisia has been separated
into 5 sections (Absinthium, Artemisia, Dracunculus, Seriphidium ,
and Tridentatae ) (Torrell et al., 1999). There are 26Artemisia taxa distributed in different phytogeographic regions
in Turkey (Güner et al., 2012), belonging to Artemisia ,Dracunculus and Seriphidium sections. This infrageneric
classification of the genus does not represent as a normal grouping
(Valles & McArther, 2000). The genus includes the taxonomical
difficulties due to the infra-spesific diversity of the used diagnostic
morphological characters in the classification. This triggers the search
for new diagnostic characteristics.
The fruits or seeds have the typical morphological characters such as
shape, color, dimension and surface ornamentation structures, and they
can reflect valuable in the clarifying of taxonomic difficulties and in
the establishment of systematic relationships (Barthlott, 1981;
Karaismailoğlu & Erol, 2018). Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) is
very significant for the carpological micromorphology. It permits to
examine the ultrastructure of integuments in more data and to clarify
extra fruit characters, such as the features of the carpopodium and the
apical bowl, primary and secondary surface structures ultrastructure of
the surface (Mukherjee & Nordenstam, 2010; Boyko, 2011; Vakulenko et
al., 2020).
SEM with energy dispersive X-ray spectrometry (SEM-EDS) is an elemental
microanalysis technique broadly practical across a wide range of the
physical and biological sciences, technology, and forensic studies
(Goldstein et al., 2003). In this technique, electron-excited
characteristic X-ray peaks offer characterization and quantification for
all elements of the periodic table (Dale & Ritchie 2013). SEM-EDS is
able to quantitative analysis with correctness and precision equivalent
to wavelength dispersive spectrometry (WDS) analysis (Ritchie et al.,
2012). This application has not been used for systematic purposes, so
far. A percentage comparison of the elements in the achene pericarp
would be helpful in systematically determining the correlation.
Some morphological, anatomical, cytological and palynological studies on
some taxa of the genus Artemisia have been made, so far( Pınar & Adıgüzel, 1998; Nourbakhsh et al., 2008; Kursat &
Civelek, 2011; Kurşat et al., 2011a, 2011b; Tabur et al., 2012; Tabur et
al., 2014; Kursat et al., 2014; Kurşat et al., 2015; Kurşat et al.,
2018; Sancar et al., 2021). Also, morphological characters of the
achenes have been taken into account for diagnosis of a small number ofArtemisia taxa in different countries (Boyko, 2013; Abdel-Hamid,
2020; Vakulenko et al., 2020; Al‑Ajmi et al., 2021). However, the
significance of the achene in the genus has often been ignored in
Turkey, where is one of the centers of diversity for the genus. The
target of this study is to examine the macro and micro morphological
characteristics of achenes of Turkish Artemisia taxa for the
first time, and debate the systematic practice of these characters.
Also, the taxa within the genus will be compared for the first time,
with elemental analyzes in the achene pericarp.