12. Taraxacum sect. Macrocornuta Soest, Acta Bot. Neerl. 9: 304. 1960.
大角蒲公英组 da jiao pu gong ying zu
Leaves deep green and suffused purplish or spotted on interlobes, usually thin, not thickened; petiole ± unwinged; leaf blade undivided to pinnatisect in a complicated manner. Outer phyllaries dark green, blackish green, or mid-green but often with a purplish apex or borders or entirely suffused purplish, linear-lanceolate to ovate-lanceolate, usually arcuate to patent or rarely erect-patent, apex callose to corniculate; inner phyllaries often of unequal width, apex flat to horned. Stigmas usually discolored. Achene grayish straw-colored brown, usually 3-4 × 0.8-1 mm; body ± densely spinulose above, subabruptly to ± gradually narrowing into a subcylindric to cylindric 0.4-2 mm cone, spinule usually long, thin, and erect-patent; beak usually longer than 7-8 mm, thin. Pappus snow white.
About 25 species: centered in the region from Iran to C Asia; one species in China.
Taraxacum sect. Macrocornuta in China requires additional study where only one species was identified with certainty, but the diversity might be higher.
Taraxacum sect. Macrocornuta was not subjected to a taxonomic revision. The names published on the material from the vicinity of China form a complex of agamospermous and sexual populations, and without a field population study it is difficult to delimit individual taxonomic units. Taraxacum alatavicum Schischkin (Fl. URSS 29: 477, 731. 1964), T. lipskyi Schischkin (Fl. Turkmen. 7: 383. 1960), and T. longipyramidatum Schischkin (Fl. URSS 29: 489, 735. 1964) were reported from Xinjiang (C. H. An, Fl. Xinjiang. 5: 420, 425, 426. 1999; FRPS 80(2): 37, 48, 49. 1999), but both the complexity of the group and the lack of convincing material to prove the records make it advisable not to include these names in the present treatment. Taraxacum wallichii Candolle is a sexual taxon described from India; the name usually covers the whole section in the literature. We have failed to find any Chinese material approaching the morphology of T. wallichii.
The name Taraxacum repandum N. Pavlov refers to a taxon occurring in southwesternmost Tian Shan in Kazakhstan. It is a morphologically peculiar species, rather isolated in the flora of C Asia, and difficult to assign to a section. It might belong to T. sect. Macrocornuta as a marginal member, but further study is needed. We consider the report of its occurrence in China (FRPS 80(2): 63. 1999) as an error.
