J. Christopher Havran Ohio University Environmental and Plant Biology
Keywords
Viola robusta, Conant Award, Havran
Description
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The Hawaiian violets are monophyletic lineage of angiosperms that have undergone a putative adaptive radiation throughout the Hawaiian Islands. Species in similar habitat types (cloud forest, high-elevation bog, and mesic streambank) exhibit remarkable parallelisms in leaf morphology and growth form. Viola robusta was formerly classified as a subspecies of Viola chamissoniana, a dry cliff violet restricted to O'ahu. Recent molecular systematic investigations of the Hawaiian violet lineage suggests that Viola robusta is not a subspecies of Viola chamissoniana.