Taxonomic study of (Plantaginaceae Juss.) and allied genera of Scrophulariaceae Juss∙

The morphology and morphometric of stems, leaves, inflorescence, flowers and fruits of 18 species of Plantago L. (Plantaginaceae sensu stricto (s.s.) as well as 18 related taxa that were formerly assigned to the Scrophulariaceae , representing the genera : Anarrhinum, Antirrhinum, Digitalis ,Linaria, Kickxia, Russelia, Verbascum and, Veronica were investigated . To clarify the taxonomic relationships among all studied taxa and provide more information about the phenetic relationships of the investigated species of Plantago and its infrageneric classification ,107 morphological characters were numerically analyzed using the UPGMA clustering method ∙The resulting phenogram clearly showed the separation of the Plantago species from the investigated scrophulariaceous species∙ This result supports the earlier taxonomic views in the isolation of Plantago in its own mono-generic family (Plantaginaceae) apart from other Scrophulariaceous species ∙Additionally, the study showed that Veronica possessed certain affinities to Plantago species, thus giving extra support to the earlier views that Plantaginaceae sensu stricto and Scrophulariaceae sensu lato are allied through Veronica ∙Moreover , the obtained data provided some evidence for the infrageneric classification of Plantago and corresponded with the ,classification systems proposed by Rhan (1978) and Shipunov(2021)∙