New Records of Liparis kumokiri Group (Orchidaceae) in Eurasia Suggest Its Recent Dispersal from East Asia.

The article describes a new case of long-distance dispersal in vascular plants. The reported plant belongs to a group of closely related taxa from East Asia, here referred to as 'kumokiri-alliance'. Our phylogenetic data show that this alliance is poorly resolved into separate species and according to available data the discussed taxon cannot be referred to any particular species. Presumably the same plant was earlier discovered in Italy (in 2012) and in Austria (in 2016) and reported under the name L. kumokiri, but most of the authors treated it as a native element in those countries. In this article, we report further records of this plant in Krasnoyarsk krai, in the Republic of Dagestan and presumably also in Kamchatka krai of Russia. The ITS sequence data of plants from Krasnoyarsk krai and from Republic of Dagestan show that it is very closely related (if not identical) to the plants from Italy, suggesting that the plant has already developed a large secondary range, probably the largest among orchids in Eurasia, but it might have been overlooked due to its inconspicuous habitus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]