Abstract. Artemisia, along with Chenopodiaceae, is the dominant component growing in desert and dry grassland of Northern Hemisphere. Artemisia pollen its high productivity, wide distribution, easy identification usually regarded as an eco-indicator for assessing aridity distinguishing from vegetation terms relative abundance ratio Chenopodiaceae/Artemisia (C/A). Nevertheless, divergent opinion...

BACKGROUND AND AIMS In spite of recent phylogenetic analyses for the Chenopodiaceae-Amaranthaceae complex, some morphological characters are not unambiguously interpreted, which raises homology questions. Therefore, ontogenetic investigations, emphasizing on 'bracteoles' in Atripliceae and flowers in Chenopodioideae, were conducted. This first paper presents original ontogenetic observations in...