Bellevalia vuralii & Aslan is described as a new species of Bellevalia from southeast Turkey. As well as its morphological characteristics and classification with regards to sections, its description, ecology, and relationship with related species are presented and discussed. The somatic chromosome number of these species was defined to be 2n = 8. | Turkish Journal of Botany Turk J Bot (2016) 40: 394-401 © TÜBİTAK doi: Research Article Bellevalia vuralii & Aslan (Asparagaceae): a new species from SE Turkey 1, 2 3 4 Bilal ŞAHİN *, Serdar ASLAN , Osman KARABACAK , Esra MARTİN 1 Yapraklı Vocational School, Çankırı Karatekin University, Çankırı, Turkey 2 Department of Forest Botany, Faculty of Forestry, Düzce University, Düzce, Turkey 3 Polatlı Faculty of Science and Literature, Gazi University, Polatlı, Ankara, Turkey 4 Department of Biotechnology, Faculty of Science, Necmettin Erbakan University, Meram, Konya, Turkey Received: Accepted/Published Online: Final Version: Abstract: Bellevalia vuralii & Aslan is described as a new species of Bellevalia from southeast Turkey. As well as its morphological characteristics and classification with regards to sections, its description, ecology, and relationship with related species are presented and discussed. The somatic chromosome number of these species was defined to be 2n = 8. Key words: Bellevalia, Asparagaceae, Siirt, Turkey 1. Introduction Bellevalia species are distributed in three different phytogeographical regions: Mediterranean, SaharoSindian, and Irano-Turanian (Feinbrun-Dothan, 1940). The Irano-Turanian phytogeographical region is the most important, with high distribution of the species. The genus is represented by 4 sections with 45 species according to Feinburn-Dothan. When distribution and endemic regions are examined, the Irano-Turanian region is observed as the main area for species distribution, while Iran and Turkey are introduced as areas where new species are to be expected (Feinburn-Dothan, 1940). The genus is represented by 6 sections (FeinbrunDothan, 1940; Persson and Wendelbo, 1979; Wendelbo, 1980) with approximately 70 species according to studies published around the world (Gürdal et al., 2014; Karabacak et al., 2014, 2015). .
