The taxonomy of the Paeonia mascula group in the Tyrrhenian Islands has always been controversial, especially in Sardinia and Corsica. In this paper, 124 morpho-colorimetric quantitative and qualitative features of seeds of the Paeonia mascula group from the Balearic Islands, Corsica, Sicily, and Sardinia were measured by an image analysis system to evaluate whether differences in seed morphology were present and if the results support the current taxonomic treatment. Digital images of 41 accessions for a total of 3,317 seeds were acquired using a flatbed scanner, and morpho-colorimetric seed features were analysed using a plugin developed for the open source software ImageJ. The data were statistically processed by applying the stepwise Linear Discriminant Analysis (LDA). The results showed that the seeds of the studied taxa were distinguishable with a high percentage of classification and highlighted that three different taxa are identifiable in Corsica (P. corsica, P. mascula subsp. mascula, and P. morisii), while only one (P. cambessedesii) is identifiable in the Balearic Islands. In the same way, the morpho-colorimetric analysis identified two well-defined taxa in Sicily (P. mascula subsp. mascula and P. mascula subsp. russoi). On the other hand, the discriminant analysis suggested that only P. corsica/morisii and P. sandrae were present in Sardinia, while differences were highlighted between Sardinian and Corsican peonies. The present study represents the first attempt to investigate the taxonomy of the P. mascula group, which makes in-depth usage of the seed features as diagnostic characters. The results obtained in this work enable the usefulness of image analysis techniques in taxonomic investigations to be suggested in order to contribute to the future systematic evaluation.

中文翻译：

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种子图像分析对第勒尼安群岛芍药群的分类鉴别

第勒尼安群岛的牡丹属植物群的分类一直存在争议，尤其是在撒丁岛和科西嘉岛。本文通过图像分析系统对来自巴利阿里群岛、科西嘉岛、西西里岛和撒丁岛的芍药组种子的 124 个形态色度定量和定性特征进行了测量，以评估种子形态是否存在差异以及结果是否存在差异。支持当前的分类处理。使用平板扫描仪获取 41 个种质共 3,317 个种子的数字图像，并使用为开源软件 ImageJ 开发的插件分析形态色度种子特征。通过应用逐步线性判别分析（LDA）对数据进行统计处理。结果表明，所研究类群的种子具有很高的分类率，并强调在科西嘉岛可识别三种不同的类群（P. corsica、P. mascula subsp. mascula 和 P. morisii），而只有一种（ P. camessedesii) 在巴利阿里群岛可识别。以同样的方式，形态比色分析在西西里岛确定了两个明确定义的分类群（P. mascula subsp. mascula 和 P. mascula subsp. russoi）。另一方面，判别分析表明撒丁岛仅存在 P. corsica/morisii 和 P. sandrae，而撒丁岛牡丹和科西嘉牡丹之间的差异突出。本研究首次尝试研究 P. mascula 组的分类，深入使用种子特征作为诊断特征。