Abstract

During the past one year and several months,a large number of flower buds and root tips have been fixed in the field and brought back to the university laboratory. These materials have been studied cytologically and a part of the work has been published in previous papers. This is the third report on the chromosome counts in the series of this study. One of the most common and widely distributed families, the Compsitae, is here selected for cytological investigation. Hayata (1904) was the first person who made a thorough taxonomical study of the Taiwan Compositae.He enumerated 39 genera and 77 species based on the limited material available at that time.During the years between 1932 and 1941, a series of taxonomical works were carried out by an aster family specialist, Prof. S. Kitamura (1932,’35’37,’40,’41) of Kyoto University,Japan. That outstanding taxonomical revision covers nearly all the Taiwan species and established a general outline of the family in Taiwan. Recently Hu (1965-'68) enumerated the Chinese species of Compositae. According to the Masamune list (1954) there are 71 genera, 190 species and 21 infraspecific taxa of Compositae recorded on Taiwan. Not all but some notes on the Tawan plants can be found in the works of Prof. S. Kitamura (1968-) entitled 'Compositae of Southeast asia and Himalayas.' However, a very limited number of the indigenous species have been studied cytologically. A total of 16 taxa belonging to the aster family were recorded by chuang et al.( 1962). Hsu (1967) reported the chromosome counts of 19 taxa belonging to 14 genera in the family compositae which were found in Tapiei and its vicinity. The range of collection has been extended in this study both as to latitude and altitude. Table 2 gives the record of the localitles, date of collection and the collection numbers.