Nordic Journal of Botany Accepted 1-10-2003 Nord. J. Bot. 24(3) 249 On a new subspecies of Adoxa moschatellina (Adoxaceae), apoendemic in Calabria (S Italy) Lorenzo Peruzzi and Nicodemo Giuseppe Passalacqua Introduction According to Pignatti (1982), the name of the genus Adoxa L. would derive from the greek term “adoxos” (= without importance); it was adopted by Linnaeus (1737) with the aim to justify the problems that Adoxa moschatellina L. created to his classification system (“...nullam splendidam faciem, nullam ornamentum, nullamque gloriam, sed in partibus fructificantibus discedit ab omni theoria et doctrina systematica a numero desunta...”), because of the contemporary occurrence of a terminal tetramerous flower and lateral pentamerous flowers. Subsequently, Linnaeus (1745) himself doubtfully linked this plant with Fumaria L.; then definitely placed A. moschatellina (Linnaeus 1753) in his Octandria Tetragynia class, Peruzzi, L. & Passalacqua, N. G. 2006. On a new subspecies of Adoxa moschatellina (Adoxaceae), apoendemic in Calabria (S Italy). – Nord. J. Bot. 24: 249-256. Copenhagen. ISSN 0107-055X. Adoxa moschatellina subsp. cescae subsp. nova is proposed. Phyto- geographical, karyological and morphological evidences are presented. This subspecies appear to be endemic to the Coastal Chain, Calabria (S Italy) and shows a triploid (2n = 54) chromosome complement, different from the diploid (2n = 36) one of A. moschatellina s.s. By a morph- ological point of view, pollen and stomata size of the latter (from the whole Italy, including the Pollino Massif, N Calabria) appear to be smaller in average than those of the new subspecies, which can be considered as a new apoendemic taxon, because of its distribution and high ploidy level. L. Peruzzi, Dipartimento di Biologia, Unità di Botanica generale e sistematica, Università di Pisa, via Luca Ghini 5, 56126 Pisa, Italy. E-mail: lperuzzi @biologia.unipi.it. – N. G. Passalacqua, Natural History Museum of Calabria and Botanic Garden, University of Calabria, 87030, Arcavacata di Rende (Cosenza), Italy. E-mail: nicodemo@unical.it. only considering the terminal flower. The peculiarities of this strange little perennial herb inspired during the years many observations on its problematic relationships with some repre- sentatives of Araliaceae, Caprifoliaceae, Fumaria- ceae, Ranunculaceae or Saxifragaceae (De Jussieu 1789; Candolle 1830; Wydler 1850; Hooker 1873; Drude 1879, 1884; Clarke 1882; Fritsch 1891; Lagerberg 1909; Sturm 1910; Sprague 1927; Warming 1932; Martinovsky 1931; Erdtman 1952; Weberling 1966). Fukuoka (1974) suggested that flowers of this plant should have dimerous and trimerous ontogenetic origin and acknowledged the possible relation of Adoxa with Sambucus L. (Caprifoliaceae), excluding other less reliable the- ories formulated in the past.