The salsifies are mostly natives of Europe and Asia, but several species have been introduced into North America and Australia and have spread widely there. There is one species sometimes considered native to North America, Tragopogon mirus, but it is in fact a hybrid of two non-native species.[5]
Some of the more common species of Tragopogon are known, in the regions where they are most common, by the common names goat's beard, goatsbeard, salsify, or common salsify, without further qualification. These names are therefore inherently ambiguous, and best avoided, or reserved for the genus collectively. In the species list below, the first common name given is the one that seems to be most widely used for that species and is not in significant use for any other species.
The vegetable called salsify is usually the root of the purple salsify,
Spanish salsify
, Scorzonera hispanica, which is closely related though not a member of the genus Tragopogon.
Etymology
The name Tragopogon comes from
Ancient Greek τράγος (trágos) 'billy goat', and πώγων (pṓgōn) 'beard'.[6]
Hybrid speciation
Salsifies are one example where
allopolyploid, but its ancestors were T. dubius and T. porrifolius. These new species are usually referred to as "the Ownbey hybrids" after the botanist who first described them. The T. mirus population grows mainly by reproduction of its own members, but additional episodes of hybrid speciation continue to add to the T. mirus population.[9]
^USDA, NRCS (n.d.). "Tragopogon". The PLANTS Database (plants.usda.gov). Greensboro, North Carolina: National Plant Data Team. Retrieved 14 December 2015.
^Neill, Amanda (2005). A Dictionary of Common Wildflowers of Texas & the Southern Great Plains. Fort Worth: TCU Press. p. 155.
^Ownbey, M. 1950. Natural hybrid speciation and amphiploidy in the genus Tragopogon. American Journal of Botany 37:487–499.
P.S. Soltis
. 1991. Ownbey's Tragopogons Forty Years Later. American Journal of Botany 78:1586–1600.
Soltis, P. S.
, Pires, J. C., Kovarik, A., Tate, J. A., & Mavrodiev, E. (2004). Recent and recurrent polyploidy in Tragopogon (Asteraceae): cytogenetic, genomic and genetic comparisons. Biological Journal of the Linnean Society, 82, 485–501.
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