[Press release] The plantain family is full of hybrids ~Japan's time honored Asian Plantain weed arose from a continental Western Plantain hybrid~

(2009.09.04)

The research group of the National Institute for Basic Biology's Naoko Ishikawa, Yamagata University's Jun Yokoyama, and the University of Tokyo's Hirokazu Tsukaya has conducted gene analysis on the familiar plantain weed, which commonly survives being repeatedly stepped on to thrive on the sides of streets and sidewalks worldwide. The group found that the Asian species of the plantain weed is the result of hybridization between the common western plantain that spread far and wide across the Eurasian continent with an unknown species, and then became naturalized in Japan. Interestingly, a species common to the Ryukyu Islands and Taiwan that has been sometimes classified as either the Asian species or the common western species, was actually found to be derived from a hybridization of those species. In addition, extensively studying the close relations of the Plantago genus has shown that a surprisingly large number of plantain species share complex mutual hybrid relationships. The results of this research were published in the American Botanical Society's science journal "American Journal of Botany".

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