In this study, three hybrids of Origanum (Lamiaceae) were examined in detail using morphological, karyological, palynological and molecular approaches. One of the three hybrids, O. × aytacii, is here described for the first time, and is compared with its putative parents, O. sipyleum and O. vulgare subsp. hirtum. In addition to morphological, karyological and palynological features, we also examined nuclear ribosomal DNA (ITS) sequences of O. × intermedium (O. onites × O. sipyleum), O. × intercedens (O. onites × O. vulgare subsp. hirtum) and their purported parental species that share the same area with the new hybrid. Pollen grains were hexacolpate and isopolar. The range of Polar/Equatorial ratio (P/E) of pollen for investigated taxa varied from 0.74 to 0.99. All investigated taxa are diploid with a chromosome number as 2n = 30. According to molecular results, O. × aytacii was the most polymorphic taxon. In addition, DNA sequences showed that O. × intercedens was more similar to O. vulgare subsp. hirtum than to O. onites, and O. × intermedium was more similar to O. onites than to O. sipyleum. Furthermore, O. onites and O. vulgare subsp. hirtum have many different ITS haplotypes, probably resulting from backcrossing with different individuals. Results obtained in this study demonstrate that hybridization has played a major role in the process of Origanum speciation.

The floras on the highest mountains in tropical eastern Africa are among the most unique floras in the world. Despite the exceptionally high concentration of endemic species, these floras remain understudied from an evolutionary point of view. In this study, we focus on the Carduus-Cirsium group (subtribe Carduinae) to unravel the evolutionary relationships of the species endemic to the tropical Afromontane and Afroalpine floras, aiming to improve the systematics of the group. We applied the Hyb-Seq approach using the Compositae1061 probe set on 190 samples (159 species), encompassing representatives of all genera of Carduinae. We used two recently developed pipelines that enabled the processing of raw sequence reads, identification of paralogous sequences and segregation into orthologous alignments. After the implementation of a missing data filter, we retained sequences from 986 nuclear loci and 177 plastid regions. Phylogenomic analyses were conducted using both concatenated and summary-coalescence methods. The resulting phylogenies were highly resolved and revealed three distinct evolutionary lineages consisting of the African species traditionally referred to as Carduus and Cirsium. Consequently, we propose the three new genera Afrocarduus, Afrocirsium and Nuriaea; the latter did notably not belong to the Carduus-Cirsium group. We detected some incongruences between the phylogenies based on concatenation vs. coalescence and on nuclear vs. plastid datasets, likely attributable to incomplete lineage sorting and/or hybridization.

In this study, we determined antioxidant activity of Satureja icarica (Lamiaceae) which is used as a spice by the local population against 1,1-diphenyl-2-picryl-hydrazyl (DPPH·), N,N-dimethyl-p-phenylenediamine radicals (DMPD•+), and 2,2-azino-bis-3-ethylbenzthiazoline-6-sulfonic acid (ABTS•+) as well as their ability to reduce Fe3+, Fe3+-TPTZ, and Cu2+. The antioxidant activities of both extracts were similar to those of standards in all assays. For instance, IC50 of S. icarica were for scavenging DPPH was 10.19 μg/mL. The results of liquid chromatography-high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS) revealed that the main secondary metabolites in Satureja icarica were found to be as rosmarinic acid and luteolin-7-O-rutinoside.