Mysterious chokeberries: new data on the diversity and phylogeny of Aronia Medik. (Rosaceae)

<p><em>Aronia</em> Medik. (chokeberry, Rosaceae) is a genus of woody shrubs with two or three North American species. Species boundaries and relationships between species of <em>Aronia</em> are frequently under question. The only European species in the genus, <em>A. mitschurinii</em> A.K.Skvortsov &amp; Maitul., is suggested to be an inter-generic hybrid. In order to clarify the relationships between <em>Aronia</em> species, we performed several morphometric and molecular analyses and found that the molecular and morphological diversity within American <em>Aronia</em> data is low, and species boundaries are mostly not clearly expressed. Whereas morphology is able to separate American species from <em>Aronia mitschurinii</em>,<em> </em>there is no support for such discrimination from the molecular data; our analyses did not reveal evidence of <em>A. mitschurinii</em> hybrid origin. We believe that that higher-resolution markers are needed to resolve species boundaries and putative hybridization events.</p>