Two species in Iliamna Greene, I. corei and I. remota, have been questioned as to their designation as separate species. Iliamna remota, the Kankakee Mallow, is found in several disjunct populations in eastern Illinois, Indiana, and western Virginia. It is speculated that I. remota was introduced into Virginia during the early 1900s via human activity and railways. Iliamna corei, the Peters Mountain Mallow, is known from one population located in southwest Virginia on Peters Mountain. Currently, their populations do not overlap and their habitats differ greatly. Both I. corei and I. remota are classified as endangered at the state level and I. corei is federally listed as well. Conservation efforts are underway to preserve populations in both species. Inter-simple sequence repeats (ISSRs) have been shown to be informative in species and population studies and for estimating genetic diversity of rare and endangered plant species. Ten primers were used for 36 individuals representing I. corei and I. remota. For I. remota, four Virginia, one Indiana, and four Illinois populations were sampled. Iliamna corei representatives were obtained from the natural population on Peters Mountain and the research garden at Virginia Tech. The data were analyzed cladistically using parsimony and by UPGMA and neighbor-joining analysis. The results correlate with the geological distribution of the species and suggest multiple introduction events of I. remota to Virginia.

Key words: Iliamna, ISSR, Malvaceae