Monographie des Leguminosae de France Tome 2

This is the second volume in the Monographie des Leguminosae de France series and follows the publication of the third volume at the end of 2013 and the fourth volume at the end of 2016. Devoted to the Galegeae tribe in the broad sense of its acceptance and to that of Hedysareae, supplemented by the treatment of three smaller tribes in France, the Robinieae, Sesbanieae and Thermopsideae. The monograph will be finalized with the edition of volume 1, which will be the completion of over twenty years of work.

The Galegeae tribe has been regarded, since the intrusion of molecular phylogeny into observational botany, as an artificial, unmistakably polyphyletic concept made up of several groups of species forming clades which are themselves monophyletic. This is the reason why various authors have isolated, over the past twenty years, a few genera within the Coluteae and Caraganae tribes, and have therefore proposed very variable treatments for the Galegeae tribe. The overall nomenclatural work of this group seemed to be finalized, as it was only partially done. In particular, isolating the genus Galega and licorice within distinct tribes seemed necessary. Thus, this vast historical tribe of the legume systematics corresponds to a sum of small paucigeneric tribes and becomes, in its strict sense, monogeneric. Among them is the most emblematic genus of the Fabaceae, Astragalus. With its almost 3000 species, it alone sums up the complexity of studying this family, whose representatives are found in much of the world. If the number of species present in this edition is reduced, almost starving with regard to the diversity of the genus, the authors have proposed a complete treatment of the genus prior to that of the French species, so that everyone can understand it in all its dimension.

The Hedysareae tribe, which is particularly compact, has experienced profound nomenclatural upheavals in the delimitation of the genera composing it, following new phylogenetic studies, most of which have been published over the past ten years. Seeming to be particularly correlated with morphological elements, these molecular approaches have led us to integrate all these evolutions into this treatment, and in particular to retain the genus Sulla.

In general, this volume retains the logic of the previous volumes, either on the one hand to treat the species in a broad approach, without retaining the varieties of low nomenclatural robustness, and on the other hand to systematically recast classical taxonomic approaches with regard to the most recently published phylogenetic studies, since of course they are correlated by synapomorphies.

The volume includes digitized images of fresh plants to facilitate identification.

French Language