The taxonomic position of this complex within the genus also remains controversial since the chloroplast and nuclear genomic regions used for a phylogenetic analysis proved to be insufficiently variable. Many representatives of this genus from the region frequently have unclear taxonomic status, such as members of the A. One of the centers of diversity of this genus is located on the territory of the Eastern Carpathians. includes many species of toxic and pharmaceutically important plants. Further, since European beech starts to reproduce at the age of 40-50 years (Houston Durrant et al., 2016), we expected that we would principally find F1 hybrids, but also possibly backcrosses given the age of 100 years of the studied stands.
Concerning the last two aims, we hypothesized that European and Oriental beech would hybridize because the two subspecies are known to hybridize in their natural contact zone in the Southeastern Balkans (Cardoni et al., 2021 Müller et al., 2019). Our specific aims were to: (1) expand our knowledge about the genetic diversity and structure of Oriental beech across its range using microsatellite loci (2) establish a database of origin-tracked planted Oriental beech stands in Western Europe, complemented with knowledge about the degree of divergence between native European and introduced Oriental beech and about the climate at the planting and donor sites (3) assess the extent to which the two subspecies hybridize upon introduction of Oriental beech in two of the oldest stands established in the early 1900s and (4) assess phenological differences between the two subspecies to better anticipate the direction in which hybridization may occur.
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