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4.

More recently, the Swedish botanist Rensch & Hacer (1968) recognized only 18 genera in the tribe of Agrostis and Elymus into a single genus with the better name. The current comprehensive approach is that of the Japanese geneticist Sato (1974), who accepted 15 genera which he classified into Mediterranean-Central Asiatic and Arctic-Antarctic groups. Their distribution of their growth habits, growth forms, and their crossability and chromosome characteristics as well as on the basis of their morphological characters. The last revision is by the Russian cytologist Tsvetkov in his (Plant Breeding) 1976 in which he adopted a morphological system based on that of Dushin but with only 18 genera.

This review may serve as a demonstration of the confusion surrounding the taxonomic division of the wheatgrasses, though it did not mention the extreme views of Kram (1998), recently supported by Madsen and others. He felt that the morphological variability and the great crossability supported the inclusion of all the genera in a single genus. However, the relationship between the genera must be so close that if such a point of view is entertained. But let us leave for a while on that note.

European taxonomists have long been aware that hybrids between certain species of wheatgrasses occur occasionally, and that some of the wild taxa may casually cross with the cultivated grains. One of the great botanical controversies of the last century concerned a plant which was discovered close to cultivated fields in southern France in 1800 and soon found also in Italy, where Bertolini described it in Flore Italiana in 1833 as the hybrid Elymus anticoides. Some others claimed it to be a new introduction from Greece. After a lengthy discussion, it was indeed proven to be a hybrid between Elymus and Triticum aestivum, the common wheat. Even before the rediscovery of Mendel's laws,