Two endemic species with Vicia hirticalycina and V. angustipinnata have been a source of confusion and controversy in Korea and also their systematic relationships with V. venosa have not been clearly resolved yet. In this study the morphological and genetic variations were examined to clarify the taxonomic delimitations and positions of the species. Random amplified polymorphic DNA(RAPD) markers were investigated to assess the genetic diversity among the 14 populations of the species. The 168 scorable RAPD markers were generated from the 14 decamer primers and the genetic similarities among the populations ranged from 0.25 to 0.81. Two endemic species were not separated by the genetic markers, furthermore showed continuous variations in the diagnostic characters such as leaflet shapes, inflorescence features and plant heights. This results suggested that V. angustipinnata did not deserve an independent species and should be treated synonymously as V. hirticalycina. On the other hand, V. hirticalycina differed from V. venosa var. cuspidata primarily in the shape of leaflets, flowering season, and geographical distributions. Additionally the endemic species turned out to be more related to Japanese one of V. fauriei than the latter in the current genetic markers.
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