Vegetative Morphological Variations within Some Egyptian Amaranthus L. Species

Abstract

Leaf and stem vegetative morphological characters have been studied in ten Egyptian Amaranthus species. Macro-and micro-morphological characters besides leaf venation and architecture have been studied. Twenty-seven main variable characters have been subjected as OTU’s to numerical analysis. The resulted dendrograms (nearest neighbor, group average and farthest neighbor) divided the studied species into two categories with different subdivisions. From the most important morphological characters within the studied taxa are the places of red spot on the leaf surfaces and the type of leaf venation. These characters divided the studied taxa into two main groups: 1- the red spot; on the middle versus on the lower part of the leaf blades, 2- the leaf venation; reticulodromus versus brochidodromous.