Monographie des Leguminosae de France, Tome 4: Tribu des Fabeae, des Cicereae et des Genisteae [Monograph on the Leguminosae of France, Volume 4: Tribes Fabaceae, Cicereae and Genisteae]

Bulletin de la Société Botanique du Centre-Ouest, Nouvelle Série, Numéro Spécial Volume: 46
This is the fourth volume in the series on the Legume family devoted to two major tribes of the flora of France, the Fabeae and Genisteae. This publication is part of an undertaking that began almost fifteen years ago, and will be continued by the editors with the future publication of volume two devoted to Galegeae and Hedysareae and then the first volume, which will be published last, and deal with other subfamilies and tribes. As in volume three, the authors present a twin approach in the treatment of taxa. The first is a synthetic vision of the species, which only occasionally retains the many varieties described by the authors. The second is the integration into our nomenclatural choices of results of the most recent molecular studies, but always with the aim of a certain degree of convergence between those findings and morphology of the plants. Thus the genus Genista is treated at large (it includes Teline, Chamaespartium, Retama, Echinospartum), as well as Cytisus (which includes Calicotome, Sarothamnus, Chamaecytisus), Lathyrus (including Pisum) and Vicia (including Lens). On the contrary, the authors do not treat Ulex within Genista despite several phylogenetic studies suggesting a close proximity between these two genera, as in their eyes the morphological aspects are not sufficiently correlated. As for Trifolieae, they also present occasional species, rarer for tribes discussed in this volume, but not hybrids, which are of little interest. Increased collaboration with national botanical conservatories has been of great help and definitely allows more precision in chorological treatments. As before, the maps presented should be considered as starting points, snapshots of observations of the listed species.