Papaveraceae

Abstract

The Papaveraceae are distributed, with a few exceptions, throughout the Northern Hemisphere, especially in both eastern Asia and western North America (subfam. Hypecoideae and subfam. Papaveroideae) and in northern Africa and Asia Minor (subfam. Fumarioideae). The plant family is ill represented in NW Europe; only 33 of the more than 800 species are distributed in this area, and only 7 of the 42 genera. Three surveys on the pollen morphology of Papaveraceae have been written. Erdtman (1952) studied 60 species from 32 genera, and Sagdullajeva (1959) 84 species from 28 genera. Both works are mainly taxonomic and aim to show the variability of pollen types in this family. They are therefore based mainly on non-European species. The recent monograph of Layka (1976), who studied 384 species from all genera is more complete and he included most of the species from NW Europe. His approach is also taxonomic and therefore differs from the present survey, but his results and many photomicrographs are of great interest and will be discussed below.