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Informateur OPTIMANewsletter


OPTIMA Newsletter 32(e) / Informateur OPTIMA 32(e)

Printed version: ISSN 0376-5016 32 (1997), online version: ISSN 2225-6970, published by the Secretariat of OPTIMA.


Contents of N°. 32(e)

 

Part I

Introduction

Nouvelles de l’OPTIMA; OPTIMA News; Gold and Silver Medals - Participate and send your proposals

Chromosome News

Karyological Investigation as a Contribution to Systematic and Taxonomic Aspects of Italian Flora; News from CROMOCAT

Conservation News

MEDUSA Network; IUCN Mediterranean Programme

Herbarium News

The BCB: A Great Bryophyta Herbarium; The Spanish Algae Herbaria

Web News

Internet Directory for Botany - Subject Category List

Projects

Announcing a Test and Trial Phase for the Registration of New Plant Names; A Call to Everyone; Registration as a Positive Step; Seeds of Digitalis atlantica , D. nervosa and D. subalpina from Wild Accessions Needed

Meetings

Le IXème Colloque OPTIMA - The IX OPTIMA Meeting in Paris,11-17 May 1998;
The XVI International Botanical Congress in Saint Louis, 1-7 August 1999;
Annnouncements

 

 

Part II

Notices of Publications:
(by W. Greuter)

 

OPTIMA; Dicotyledones; Monocotyledones; Floras; Flower Books; Floristic Inventories and Checklists; Excursions; Chorology; Regional Studies of Flora and Vegetation; Applied botany; Conservation Topics, Red Data Books; Gardens; Bibliography and Documentation; Biography and historical subjects; Reprints; Symposium Proceedings; New Periodicals

 

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NOUVELLES DE L’OPTIMA


Une quantité impressionnante de données sur les comptages de chromosomes de la région méditerranéenne est en cours de collecte dans différentes institutions. C’est pourquoi nous rendons compte dans ce numéro des activités orientées dans cette direction.

Nous voulons attirer votre attention sur la proximité du IXème Colloque de l’Optima qui doit se tenir à Paris en Mai 1998. Nous vous prions de veiller à bien respecter les dates limites d’inscription et de remise des résumés. N’hésitez pas à prendre contact avec le Pr. Moret à Paris ou avec le secrétariat de l’OPTIMA à Madrid si vous avez besoin d’informations supplémentaires. Les nouvelles les plus fraîches sur le Colloque seront disponibles sur le Web à l’adresse: http://www.bgbm.fu-berlin.de/OPTIMA/. Nous souhaiterions également vous inviter à participer au processus d’attribution des Médailles d’Or et d’Argent qui doivent être décernées au IXème Colloque en envoyant vos propositions au Secrétariat de l’OPTIMA.

Le Comité d’Edition voudrait tout particulièrement évoquer le décès du Pr. Dr. Stefan Kozuharov et manifester sa plus profonde sympathie à cette occasion. Stefan fut l’un des membres fondateurs de l’OPTIMA et était un membre actif du Comité International. Ce fut quelqu’un d’exceptionnel aussi bien au plan professionnel qu’humain. Il nous manquera beaucoup à tous.

J.M. Iriondo

 

DÉCÈS

 

† Pr. Dr. Stefan Kozuharov, Sofia, Bulgarie, décédé le 24.08.1997. Il était membre fondateur de l’OPTIMA et membre du Comité International.

 

 

NOUVELLES DES COMMISSIONS

 

IXème COLLOQUE DE L’OPTIMA

La première circulaire pour le IXème Colloque qui doit se dérouler à Paris en Mai 1998 a été diffusée au printemps dernier. La seconde circulaire a été envoyée en Octobre à tous ceux qui avaient répondu à la première. Le délai pour le paiement des droits d’inscription a été prolongé jusqu’au 31 Décembre 1997.

L’élaboration du Programme Scientifique est maintenant achevée, et le Secrétariat du Comité et le Comité d’Organisation coopèrent activement à la préparation de cet événement.

Pour plus d'informations, vous êtes priés de vous reporter à la rubrique d'annonces de ce bulletin ou de prendre contact avec le Pr. Jacques Moret, Conservatoire Botanique du Bassin Parisien, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, 61, rue Buffon, F-75005 Paris, France.

 

 

CARYOSYSTÉMATIQUE

 

La Commission pour la caryosystématique travaille activement à la création d'une base de données méditerranéennes sur les chromosomes. Malgré l'échec d'une tentative de financement de la saisie sur une grande échelle, des efforts plus modestes sont en cours pour collecter les données cytologiques. Vous êtes priés de consulter la rubrique Chromosome News de ce bulletin pour une description détaillée des réalisations en cours.

 

CARTOGRAPHIE DES ORCHIDÉES DE LA RÉGION MÉDITERRANÉENNE

 

Des progrès très importants ont été accomplis dans la cartographie de différents pays méditerranéens tels que la Grèce, l'Italie, la Turquie, l'Espagne, le Maroc, la Tunisie et les îles (Mer Égée, Canaries, Sicile).

Tout ce travail de recherche a débouché sur une quantité d'informations nouvelles et a considérablement amélioré les connaissances de base sur les orchidées méditerranéennes. Ces informations ont fait l'objet de publications, essentiellement dans le Journal Europäische Orchideen et dans Berichte aus den Arbeitskreisen Heimische Orchideen.

 

 

COMMISSION DES PRIX

 

Médailles d'Or et d'Argent de l'OPTIMA:

Participez et envoyez vos suggestions!

 

Au prochain Colloque de l'OPTIMA de Paris, la Médaille d'Or de l'OPTIMA sera décernée à un botaniste dont on estime que l'activité a apporté une contribution exceptionnelle à la phytotaxinomie de la région méditerranéenne. Par ailleurs, trois Médailles d'Argent de l'OPTIMA seront décernées aux auteurs des meilleurs articles ou livres sur la phytotaxinomie de la région méditerranéenne publiés en 1995, 1996 et 1997.

La Commission des Prix est d'ores et déjà ouverte aux suggestions sur les éventuels bénéficiaires des Médailles d'Or et d'Argent de l'OPTIMA. Pour la Médaille d'Or, vous êtes priés d'envoyer simplement le nom de votre candidat et d'exposer brièvement les raisons justifiant votre proposition. Pour les Médailles d'Argent, présentez pour examen les articles ou les livres publiés en 1995, 1996 ou 1997. Vous êtes priés d'envoyer vos propositions à : José M. Iriondo, Dpto. Biología Vegetal, E.U.I.T. Agrícola, Universidad Politécnica, E-28040 Madrid, Spain; Fax: +34 1 336 5656; E-mail: iriondo@ ccupm.upm.es.

Les règles d'attribution des Médailles d'Or et d'Argent de l'OPTIMA, modifiées par décision du Conseil de l'OPTIMA le 10.3.1978, sont les suivantes:

 

Médailles d'Argent de l'OPTIMA

  1. Les prix seront décernés tous les trois ans aux auteurs des meilleurs articles ou livres portant sur la phytotaxinomie de la région méditerranéenne et publiés pendant la période précédente de trois ans.
  2. Les prix prendront la forme de médailles en argent.
  3. Les lauréats seront choisis par une Commission des Prix dont les recommandations seront soumises au Conseil de l'organisation pour ratification et approbation.
  4. Le prix sera décerné à l'occasion d'une réunion triennale de l'Organisation.
  5. En principe, un prix est attribué pour chaque année de la période de trois ans, mais la Commission des Prix est libre de proposer l'attribution de plus d'un prix pour une même année, ou qu'aucun prix ne soit attribué une année.
  6. Les auteurs dont les articles ou les livres seront soumis à la Commission des Prix peuvent être choisis parmi les membres de l'organisation ou non.
  7. Aucun membre en activité de la Commission des Prix ou du Comité International ne pourra être désigné pour le prix.

 

Médaille d'Or de l'OPTIMA

  1. Un prix sera décerné tous les trois ans à un(e) botaniste dont on estime que l'activité a apporté une contribution exceptionnelle à la phytotaxinomie de la région méditerranéenne.
  2. Le prix consistera en une médaille en or.
  3. Le lauréat sera choisi par une Commission des Prix dont la recommandation sera soumise au Comité International de l'Organisation pour ratification et approbation.
  4. Le prix sera décerné à l'occasion d'une réunion triennale de l'Organisation.
  5. Aucun membre de la Commission des Prix ne pourra être proposé.

 

 

PUBLICATIONS

 

Le Volume 5(2) de Bocconea, avec les posters présentés au VIIème Colloque de l'OPTIMA tenu à Borovetz en 1993, et le volume 7, avec les Actes des ateliers sur la conservation des parents sauvages des plantes cultivées d'Europe, ont été publiés en Mai 1997.

Les Actes du VIIIème Colloque de l'OPTIMA tenu à Séville en 1995 viennent d'être publiés dans Lagascalia.

Vous trouverez dans la liste des publications disponibles, en tête de ce numéro du Bulletin de l'OPTIMA, des informations plus détaillées sur les remises particulières consenties aux membres de l'OPTIMA pour ces publications ainsi que d'autres.

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OPTIMA NEWS


An impressive amount of data on Mediterranean chromosome records is currently being gathered at different institutions. In this issue, we report on some of the activities taking place in this direction.

We want to call your attention to the forthcoming IX OPTIMA Meeting to be held in Paris in May 1998. Please, make sure you register and submit the abstracts in due time. Do not hesitate to contact Prof. Moret in Paris or the OPTIMA Secretariat in Madrid if you need further information. The latest news on the meeting will be available on the Web at: http://www.bgbm.fu-berlin.de/OPTIMA/. We would also like to invite you to participate in the process of designation of the OPTIMA Gold and Silver Medals to be awarded at the IX OPTIMA Meeting by sending your proposals to the OPTIMA Secretariat.

At the Editorial Board we would like to make a special mention and express our deepest sympathy on the death of Prof. Dr. Stefan Kozuharov. Stefan was one of the founding members of OPTIMA and was an active member of our International Board. He was an outstanding person both professionally and humanely. We shall all miss him very much.

J.M. Iriondo

 

 

DEATHS

 

† Prof. Dr. Stefan Kozuharov, Sofia, Bulgaria, died on 24.08.1997. He was a founding member of OPTIMA and a member of the International Board.

 

 

UPDATES ON COMMISSIONS

 

IX OPTIMA MEETING

The first circular for the IX OPTIMA Meeting to take place in Paris in May 1998 was issued last spring. The second circular was distributed in October to all those who answered the first circular. The deadline for payment of registration fees has been postponed till 31 December 1997.

The elaboration of the Scientific Programme is now complete and the Committee’s Secretary together with the Organizing Committee are actively working on the preparation of the event.

For further information, please check the meetings section of this newsletter and/or contact Prof. Jacques Moret, Conservatoire Botanique du Bassin Parisien, Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, 61, rue Buffon, F-75005 Paris, France.

 

 

KARYOSYSTEMATICS

 

The Commission for Karyosystematics is actively working on the creation of a Karyosystematic database for Mediterranean chromosome records. Although a proposal for funding data input on a large scale has been unsuccessful, smaller scale efforts are being carried out for the collection of cytological data. Please, check the Chromosome News section in this newsletter for a detailed description of current achievements.

 

MAPPING OF ORCHIDS IN THE MEDITERRANEAN AREA

 

Very good progress has been made on mapping in many Mediterranean countries such as Greece, Italy, Turkey, Spain, Morocco, Tunisia and islands (Aegean, Canary Islands, Sicily).

All this research work has resulted in plenty of new information and has considerably improved the current knowledge about Mediterranean orchids. This information has been published mainly in Journal Europäische Orchideen and Berichte aus den Arbeitskreisen Heimische Orchideen.

 

PRIZE COMMISSION

 

OPTIMA Gold and Silver Medals:

Participate and send your proposals!

At the forthcoming IX OPTIMA Meeting in Paris the OPTIMA Gold Medal will be awarded to a botanist who, by his or her activity, is considered to have made an outstanding contribution to the phytotaxonomy of the Mediterranean area. Moreover, three OPTIMA Silver Medals will be awarded to the authors of the best papers or books on the phytotaxonomy of the Mediterranean area that were published in 1995, 1996 and 1997.

The Prize Commission is now open to proposals for recipients of the OPTIMA Gold Medal and the OPTIMA Silver Medals. For the OPTIMA Gold Medal please, simply send the name of your candidate and briefly state the reasons that support your proposal. For the OPTIMA Silver Medals, submit papers or books published in 1995, 1996 or 1997 for consideration. Please, send your proposals to: José M. Iriondo, Dpto. Biología Vegetal, E.U.I.T. Agrícola, Universidad Politécnica, E-28040 Madrid, Spain; Fax: +34 1 336 5656; E-mail: iriondo@ ccupm.upm.es.

The regulations of the OPTIMA Gold and Silver Medals, as amended by the Executive Council of OPTIMA by decision of 10.3.1978, are as follows:

 

OPTIMA Silver Medals

  1. Prizes will be awarded every three years to the authors of the best papers or books on the phytotaxonomy of the Mediterranean area published in the preceding three-year period.
  2. The prizes will take the form of silver medals.
  3. The prize winners will be selected by a Prize Commission and its recommendations will be submitted to the Council of the Organization for ratification and approval.
  4. The prize will be awarded at a triennial meeting of the Organization.
  5. Normally, one prize is available for each year of the triennium; the Prize Commission is free however to propose that in single years more than one prize, or no prize at all, be attributed.
  6. Both members and non-members are eligible to submit papers or books for consideration by the Prize Commission.
  7. No current member of the Prize Commission or International Board will be eligible for the prize.

 

OPTIMA Gold Medal

  1. A prize will be awarded every three years to a botanist who, by his or her activity, is considered to have made an outstanding contribution to the phytotaxonomy of the Mediterranean area.
  2. The prize will consist of a gold medal.
  3. The prize winner will be selected by a Prize Commission and its recommendation will be submitted to the International Board of the Organization for ratification and approval.
  4. The prize will be awarded at a triennial meeting of the Organization.
  5. No member of the Prize Commission will be eligible for consideration.

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PUBLICATIONS

 

Volume 5(2) of Bocconea, with the posters presented at the VII OPTIMA Meeting held in Borovetz in 1993 and volume 7, with the Proceedings of the workshops on conservation of the wild relatives of European cultivated plants were published in May 1997.

The Proceedings of the VIII OPTIMA Meeting held in Sevilla in 1995 have just been published in Lagascalia.

Please check the publications offer sheet at the beginning of this issue of OPTIMA Newsletter to get further information on special discounts for OPTIMA members on these and other publications.

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CHROMOSOME NEWS


KARYOLOGICAL INVESTIGATION AS A CONTRIBUTION TO

SYSTEMATIC AND TAXONOMIC ASPECTS OF ITALIAN FLORA.

 

by F. GARBARI

 

The Botanic Garden of Pisa has traditionally been a seat of cultivation and study of many geophytes, particularly those of horticultural interest, since the XVI century. This is the main reason why today many genera of monocots of the Mediterranean area have been taken into consideration by the Biosystematic Unit of the Department of Botanical Sciences in Pisa.

Cytotaxonomic (and embryological) investigations are a tradition in Pisa, started by A. Chiarugi, G. Martinoli and E. Battaglia and ongoing today. Obviously, karyological research oriented to systematics does not focus exclusively on bulbous plants, but covers groups of particular phytogeographic value, such as endemics or relics of the Apuan Alps and Apennines, which have been reported in various published papers.

Critical genera - both of monocots and of dicots - and floras of ecological or phytogeographic interest are also studied.

The following list summarizes the current main interests:

- Gen. Allium: a biosystematic revision of Italian populations of unclear taxonomic circumscription is progressing. Groups belonging to A. sect. Rhizirideum from North-Eastern and North-Western Italy are particularly taken into account. A. lehmannii (Sicilian populations with various ploidy levels), A. chamaemoly and A. dentiferum. are also under investigation.

- Gen. Muscari: numerous specimens belonging to M. atlanticum-neglectum complex were collected from Spain (with the cooperation of B. Valdés) to Turkey (with the collaboration of N. Özhatay), showing different karyological levels and karyotype patterns. Contrary to previous statements, M. atlanticum does not seem to be present in Italy. M. kerneri, M. lelievrii and M. longifolium - all related to the M. botryoides group - are also under investigation.

- Gen. Urtica: the revision of Italian taxa is in progress, by using morpho-anatomical, histological and karyological characters, together with microcharacters related to stinging hairs and other cellular structures of relevant bioecological interest. This research is carried out in cooperation with G. Corsi.

- Gen Salvia: the systematic and taxonomic revision of S. sect. Plethiosphacein Italy is about to be concluded. Among the main results hitherto obtained, we can point out the clear specificity of S. haematodes with respect to S. pratensis and the presence of S. clandestina in Italy (syn. of S. multifida Sibth. et Smith, nom. illeg.). Moreover, S. bertolonii Vis. must be excluded from the flora of Italy, S. virgata Jacq. is to be cancelled from Sardinian flora and S. ceratophylloides Arduino is unfortunately to be considered extinct. A group of populations formerly a variety of S. pratensis will need a new taxonomic ranking. All the cited taxa have been thoroughly investigated from a karyological point of view. This research is being carried out with the cooperation of F. Del Carratore.

- Gen. Cerastium: cytogeographic studies of populations referred to as "C. arvense" (with diploids, tetraploids and hexaploids), "C. tomentosum"(with the same ploidy levels) and "C. banaticum" (with diploid and tetraploid taxa, some of them with relic value) are at a final stage. Karyological investigations have been correlated to nomenclatural and typification problems, to geographical distribution and diagnostic evaluations. This research is being carried out by N. Bechi and P. Miceli with the cooperation of P. Barberis (Genoa).

Floristic and cytosystematic research on the flora of Wadi Rum, Jordan, is in progress with the participation of D. Al-Eisawi (University of Jordan, Amman) and A. Borzatti von Löwenstern.

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NEWS FROM CROMOCAT:

A CHROMOSOME DATABASE OF THE CATALAN COUNTRIES

 

by J. SIMON & C. BLANCHÉ

 

At the OPTIMA Meeting held in Borovec in 1993, the idea of a network of chromosome databases was proposed. At the Commission of Karyosystematics at the following Meeting held in Sevilla in 1995, we presented our project of a Chromosome Database, covering the taxa of higher plants of the Catalan Countries. The adopted methodology and the current state of progress of the database is now presented.

 

SCOPE AND GOALS

 

The territorial basis of CROMOCAT is the land known as the Catalan Countries (which include the regions of Valencia and Catalonia, the Balearic Islands and the Northern -French- Catalonia, corresponding to the OPTIMA territories of Hs, Bl and Ga, respectively).

Although some chromosome counts coming from our country belong to the first period of cytogenetics (i.e., a report for Diplotaxis erucoides by Baez (1933) appeared in the historical journal Cavanillesia), the current development of karyology began under the influence of the school of Neuchâtel, through the contributions of A.M. Cauwet (Perpinyà), M.A. Cardona (Menorca) and the visits to the Pyrenees of Ph. Küpfer, during the late 60's and beginning of the 70's. Until now, no attempt to summarize the karyological knowledge of the Flora of the Catalan Countries has been reported. Although some taxa and regions have been thoroughly studied, a large number of gaps still have to be filled.

From this starting point, the following goals were designed for CROMOCAT:

  1. To include chromosome numbers but also the associated chromosomal data (karyotypes, photographs, banding, etc.). This leads to a necessary image database linked to the main tables and a more complete record card design.
  2. To include both complete cards of the chromosome studies coming from populations inside the country and reference cards of reports belonging to our taxa from outside populations for comparative purposes.
  3. To offer researchers the original publication of the data, as a large amount of complementary information cannot be included in the general cards and as an important error source is the transfer of information from papers to computer files.
  4. To design a system of image information able to introduce data directly from microscope as well as from CD-ROM or remote databases.
  5. To produce a database of free access through the Internet .

 

As a supplementary (but very important) decision, a taxonomic scheme had to be chosen. From the available floristic literature, the only complete list of taxa from the Catalan Countries at present is the Flora Manual dels Països Catalans (Bolòs et al., 1993). It was thereby selected for CROMOCAT. As this flora was also chosen as a basis for the Chorologic Database (Font, 1996), a further integrated system of Plant Information Databases could be implemented in the future.

 

STRUCTURE AND DESIGN

 

Hardware

The multi-unit pack of interconnected machines comprises a Pentium compatible computer, a Hewlett Packard ScanJet 4c/T scanner, two laser printers, an Axiolab E Zeiss microscope, a Hitachi VideoDeck VT-S80E video recorder equipped with an Averkey Plus system and completed with a Sony TV monitor and a CD-ROM duplicator-recorder Philips CDD-2000 IPW.

 

Software

The database structure has been built through the relational database manager Access 2.0 and the image digitalization has been processed through Corel Photo-Paint 5.0 and the Visioner Paper-Port 3.0 programmes.

 

Tables, fields and structure

The relational characteristic of the Access software allows the building of a system of 7 tables with some fields in common, then running as a global system but facilitating the completion of records in individual tables.

There are two main and five complementary tables. Their field structure comprises the major fields defined by the OPTIMA Commission of Karyosystematics included in the tables named CHRODATA, CHROTAXON and CHROBIBLIO (Kamari, 1996) and thus, in the near future, a network of OPTIMA databases could be organized.

 

Main tables

  1. CRO-IN.- This is the longest file, comprising 35 fields of information on any chromosome data from the Catalan Countries. All cards of bibliographic origin are linked to the digitalized original document.
  2. CRO-OUT.- This is a 9-field table including all the reports of the taxa present in the Catalan Countries coming from outside the study area.

 

Complementary tables

  1. BIBLIOGRAFIA, which includes the standard data of a recorded bibliographic unit and the link to the digitalized copy of each paper.
  2. TÂXONS PPCC, including the taxonomic ascription (and code number) of each record, following Bolòs et. al. (1993). The main synonyms (i.e.: Med-Checklist, Flora Europaea and Flora Iberica) have also been incorporated.
  3. FAMÍLIES, which is linked to the table above and which is generated according to the codes from Bolòs et al. (l.c.).
  4. MUNICIPIS, comprising a thesaurus of municipalities of the Catalan Countries, following the same codification adopted by Font (1996) to permit further connections.
  5. DEMARCACIÓ which includes a code for the several administrative and geographical units allowing for different types of listing and consulting (i.e.: "comarca", province, OPTIMA unit, etc.)

 

RESULTS AND CURRENT STATE OF CROMOCAT

 

After a first phase of design, a second phase of database implementation was started in 1996, in which a Secretariat composed of Maria Bigordà, Marta Margelí and Míriam Galisteo began to introduce the first package of chromosome data, mainly from literature, helped by the indexes produced by the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid and the University of Sevilla, to which we are indebted. This Secretariat is based at the Faculty of Pharmacy, University of Barcelona and incorporated in the Research Group on Plant Biodiversity and Biosystematics (GReB). A first report on the progress of our database was presented at the IVth Conference on Plant Taxonomy (Simon et al., 1996).

At present (June 1997), nearly 14,800 chromosome records are included in CROMOCAT, 2,300 belonging to CRO-IN and the remainder to CRO-OUT. Although the database information is currently being checked by an internal security system, the finished CRO-IN cards belong to 801 taxa and 4 interspecific hybrids from 345 genera and 63 vascular plant families of the Catalan Countries. This means that 18.4 % of the total flora has been studied karyologically, according to our present state of knowledge. The major geographic origin of data in CRO-IN are the Balearic Islands and the Pyrenaean region.

The next step in CROMOCAT development is the organization of a Scientific Committee to ensure the quality of the information contained in the database and to guide the forthcoming steps. These include the availability of information through Internet, and the design of chromosome research projects in the taxonomic groups or regions in which a low level of cytotaxonomic knowledge has been detected.

 

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

 

We thank Philippe Küpfer, Anne Maria Cauwet, Xavier Font, Julià Molero, Joan Vallès and Carles Benedí, for their technical advice and suggestions. We also thank the Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid and G. Nieto Feliner, as well as the Departamento de Botánica of the Universidad de Sevilla and J. Pastor, respectively, for kindly allowing us to use their computer files as reference indexes for our work.

 

References:

Baez, A. (1933). Estudio cariológico de algunas crucíferas y su interpretación en la sistemática. Cavanillesia 6: 59-103

Bolòs, O. de, Vigo, J., Masalles, R.M. & Ninot, J. (1993). Flora Manual dels Països Catalans (2nd Ed.). Pòrtic, Barcelona.

Font, X. (1996). Els bancs de dades de la Flora i la Vegetació de Catalunya. IVth Conference on Plant Taxonomy Abstracts Book: 60. Barcelona

Kamari, G. (1996). Report of the OPTIMA Comission for Karyosystematics. In: http://www.bgbm.fu-berlin.de/OPTIMA/activities/caryosystematics.htm

Simon, J., Bigordà, M. & Blanché, C. (1996). Projecte CROMOCAT: Banc de dades citogenètiques de la flora dels Països Catalans. IVth Conference on Plant Taxonomy Abstracts Book: 61. Barcelona

 

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CONSERVATION NEWS


MEDUSA NETWORK

 

by VERNON HEYWOOD

 

The MEDUSA Network of the Mediterranean Region was established by CIHEAM-MAICh, with the support of the European Union Directorate General I, for the identification, conservation and sustainable use of the wild plants of the Mediterranean Region. The Network comprises National Focal Point Coordinators from the countries of the region and also includes representatives of international organizations (CIHEAM-MAICh, IUBS, FAO, IPGRI-WANA, LEAD) that form the Steering Committee. It has already held two regional workshops, the first in Chania, Greece on 28-29 June 1996 on ‘Identification of wild food and non-food plants of the Mediterranean Region’ and the second in Hammam-Sousse, Tunisia on 1-3 May 1997 on ‘Wild food and non-food plants – Information Networking’. At this workshop a series of country profiles were presented and will be included in the Proceedings of the meeting. The Proceedings of the first Workshop have just been published. A list of priority species has been compiled and that too will be available shortly.

Plans are in hand for the design and establishment of an Interactive Regional Information System (MEDUSA IRIS) that will include the following kinds of information on the useful plants of the region: scientific plant name and authority, vernacular names, plant description, distribution, habitat, chemical data, uses, conservation status, present and past ways of trading, marketing and dispensing, and indigenous knowledge and practice (ethnobiology and ethnopharmacology), including references to literature sources.

A MEDUSA Newsletter will be published annually. The first number was issued in August 1997. It contains information on the activities of the Network and news of national and international activities on plant resources of the Mediterranean region and reports on recent and forthcoming events, and book reviews.

For further information, please contact:

Ms Melpo Skoula-Johnson
Executive Secretary of MEDUSA, Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania
Department of Natural Products
PO Box 85, 73100 Chania - Greece
Fax: 30 821 81154
E-mail: melpo@zorbas.maich.gr

 

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CONSERVATION NEWS


IUCN MEDITERRANEAN PROGRAMME

 

IUCN Mediterranean members met in Malaga, Spain from October 23 to 25, 1997 to discuss the future IUCN Mediterranean Programme. An IUCN Office for the Mediterranean Region will established in Malaga with the initial support of local, regional and central Spanish administrations.

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HERBARIUM NEWS*

edited by PALOMA BLANCO


THE BCB: A GREAT BRYOPHYTA HERBARIUM

 

by ROSA M. CROS & MONTSERRAT BRUGUÉS

 

The Bryophyta Herbarium (BCB) is located at the Unitat de Botánica de la Dpto. de Biología Animal, Biología Vegetal y Ecología de la Universitat Autónoma de Barcelona (Bellaterra). It started in 1971, right after the foundation of our University, when Professor Cruz Casas donated all her collections carried out since 1942. These collections included many specimens collected in Catalonia, essentially in the Pyrennee Mountains, from Ordesa to the cap de Creus, and in the mountains of Montseny, Montserrat y Prades as well as in Mallorca. The collections carried out by M. Losa and P. Montserrat in Cantabria and by P. Montserrat in Mallorca were also included. Moreover, it contained an abundant collection of the SEM (Societé d’Echanges des Muscineés) exchange and from other exchanges with other European and American bryologists.

Since 1971, Cruz Casas and her collaborators Rosa M. Cros and Montserrat Brugués have built up a team that has been able to form the present Herbarium. It currently holds over 50,000 specimens, a figure which is continuously increasing as a result of the collections and studies in new areas of Spain and Portugal. Most accessions come from Sistema Ibérico, Sistema Central and Sierra Nevada as well as the region of Extremadura, the Monegros and Cabo de Gata.

The specimens are kept in labelled and numbered envelopes located on numbered sheets which are stored in herbarium boxes. In order to facilitate the access, the genera and the species in each genus are ordered alphabetically. Mosses, hornworts and liverworts are kept separately, each one with its own alphabetical order.

Annex to the herbarium BCB is a collection, Brioteca Hispánica, that holds over 1,600 specimens. It is the result of an exchange that is annually carried out with Spanish bryologists. The accessions are numbered according to the date of reception and not alphabetically as in the general herbarium. A genus indexed file allows for the fast location of the accessions.

The specimens held at the Herbarium are representative of the exceptional and complex diversity of environments found in Catalonia and the Iberian Peninsula, as since 1982, numerous accessions have been added from studies carried out in Portugal. The high bryological richness of the Iberian Peninsula is patent as it has about 1,100 species.

In this herbarium, four types and most Iberian endemics are kept. Some accessions belong to localities or environments that may be presently lost.

Recently, the herbarium funds have been increased by the donations of the Herbario Seró, which included the exsiccata Dismier, and of the Herbario Vives with material mostly from Catalonia. They have both been incorporated into the general herbarium.

In the last few years, BCB data is being computerized. The herbarium does not have a Curator but counts on the effort and motivation of a team of bryologists that with Cruz Casas, emeritus professor, make possible its operation.

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THE SPANISH ALGAE HERBARIA

 

by TOMÁS GALLARDO

 

Most Spanish herbaria have algae specimens in their collections, above all, marine benthic algae. Nevertheless, the number of algae specimens stored is usually small. The herbaria with the largest collections of algae are those located in coastal areas or those corresponding to the eldest Spanish botanical institutions such as the Real Jardín Botánico (MA) or the Facultad de Farmacia de la Universidad Complutense (MAF) in Madrid.

Some herbaria hold algae that were collected more than 50 years ago. These "historical" herbaria were first studied by Gallardo et al. (1993). Since then, other authors have also made several contributions to the knowledge of these collections (Cremades, 1995; Bárbara et al., 1995; Dosil et al., 1997).

Recent funds held at the Spanish herbaria were collected in numerous floristic campaigns that have taken place over the last 30 years, mostly as a result of doctoral thesis. Since 1986, the Dirección General de Investigación, Ciencia y Tecnología (DGICYT) has provided financial aid for the publication of a Marine Benthic Flora of the Iberian Peninsula and the Balearic Islands. This has allowed for the exploration of little known geographic areas of the Iberian Peninsula and is responsible for the increase of marine algae at the Spanish herbaria. We hope that a similar program will soon be carried out with continental algae.

A non-exhaustive list of the existing algae collections at different Spanish herbaria is now presented. Data have been, in most cases, checked with the curators, keepers or owners of the algae collections. Institutional herbaria are indicated by their Index Herbariorum abbreviations and private herbaria by the names or abbreviations used by their owners. The present location of the herbaria is indicated in parenthesis following the abbreviation of the herbarium.

  • BC (Instituto Botánico, Barcelona). The funds from this institution come, almost exclusively, from the collections of continental algae carried out by Ramón Margalef. Thus, over 2,000 specimens of continental algae are preserved in formaldehyde on glass slides and in vials. Moreover, a collection comprising 350 sheets of macroscopic marine algae of Catalonia and the Balearic Islands and, a folder with 102 sheets of Mediterranean marine algae sent by J. Rodríguez Femenías, are also kept at this institution.
  • BCC (Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Barcelona) comprises around 2,500 collected accessions of continental algae from Spain and several European countries. They are mainly preserved in formaldehyde in glass vials.
  • BCF (Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad de Barcelona) comprises around 15,000 sheets of benthic marine algae from Spain, several European countries, North Africa and Namibia. Additionally, a collection of continental algae preserved in formaldehyde or on slides is also kept.
  • BCM (Facultad de Ciencias del Mar, Universidad de las Palmas de Gran Canarias) contains around 6,500 sheets of benthic marine algae, mostly from the Macaronesian region and from the African coast. It includes the herbarium previously deposited at the Jardín Botánico Viera y Clavijo.
  • BIO (Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad del País Vasco) holds 500 sheets of macroscopic marine algae of the Basque Country.
  • COA (Jardín Botánico de Córdoba) keeps 100 sheets of macroscopic marine algae of Spain.
  • FCO (Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Oviedo) has 500 sheets of macroscopic marine algae of the Cantabric Sea.
  • GDAC (Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Granada) comprises over 5,000 accessions of Spanish continental algae, preserved in slides and vials with formaldehyde or lugol . It also contains a collection of macroscopic marine algae of Andalucia collected at the beginning of this century and 150 sheets of Characeae.
  • HGI (Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Girona) keeps over 3,000 sheets of macroscopic marine algae, mostly Mediterranean.
  • JAEN (Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Jaén) has 200 sheets of Spanish macroscopic marine algae.
  • MA (Real Jardín Botánico, Madrid) contains about 11,000 accessions preserved in sheets or in glass vials with formaldehyde. The Herbarium Cavanilles can be considered the base of the section MA-Algae (Gallardo et al., 1993). Initiated by his disciples Clemente and Lagasca, this collection received a new impulse 50 years later thanks to Comeiro and Lázaro e Ibiza. At the beginning of this century the funds increased thanks to grant holders of the Junta de Ampliación de Estudios. Among them, Pedro González Guerrero should be noted, as he dedicated a great part of his life to the study and preservation of numerous accessions of Spanish continental algae (Álvarez Cobelas & Gallardo, 1985). In recent years the new funds correspond to macroscopic algae from Spanish coasts. Most accessions of section MA-Algae belong to benthic marine algae and are preserved in sheets. Only about 250 accessions of mostly continental algae are preserved in glass vials with formaldehyde. Additionally, around 500 accessions, coming from a diatom collection of H. van Heurck are preserved on slides. About 2,000 accessions belong to exotic macroscopic marine algae.
  • MACB (Facultad de Biología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid) holds 450 sheets of macroscopic marine algae from the Iberian Peninsula.
  • MAF (Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad Complutense de Madrid). Section MAF-Algae contains a collection of Blas Lázaro e Ibiza of 230 sheets of Spanish algae; a folder with 150 specimens of Pourret, with algae collected by Antoine Gouan that may come from the surroundings of Marseille; the personal herbarium of Faustino Miranda (300 sheets) with marine algae from Galicia and several localities of the Cantabric Sea; and finally, a folder holding the exsiccata of fresh water French algae of C. Rouneguère, M. Dupray and A. Mougeot. Additionally there are about 400 recently collected sheets of benthic marine algae of the Iberian Peninsula.
  • MGC (Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Málaga). The algae section of this herbarium holds over 3,600 sheets of benthic marine algae, mostly from Spain. Around 800 of them come from the Mediterranean coast of Morocco, Europe and Antarctica. In this section there are also 215 sheets from the Herbarium of the Sociedad Malagueña de Ciencias collected in the XIX century with algae from Spain, Tanger and other European countries (Conde, 1992).
  • MUB (Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Murcia) contains 350 accessions of continental algae preserved in glass vials with formaldehyde and 950 microscopic slides mostly of diatoms. Moreover, it also keeps 485 sheets of continental algae and macroscopic marine algae of the Spanish Mediterranean coast.
  • ORT (Jardín Botánico de la Orotava, Tenerife) holds 150 sheets of macroscopic marine algae from the Canary Islands.
  • PAMP (Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Pamplona) keeps 150 sheets of macroscopic marine algae from Spain.
  • SANT (Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad de Santiago de Compostela) holds about 12,000 sheets of macroscopic marine algae from Spain and other European countries.
  • SEVF (Facultad de Farmacia, Universidad de Sevilla) maintains 200 sheets of macroscopic marine algae from Spain.
  • TFC (Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Las Palmas, Tenerife) contains over 8,000 sheets of macroscopic marine algae mostly from the Canary Islands. The collection also keeps specimens from the African coast and Europe.
  • TFMC (Museo de Ciencias Naturales, Tenerife) keeps about 200 sheets of macroscopic marine algae, mostly from the Canary Islands.
  • VAB (Facultad de Biología, Universidad de Valencia, Burjassot) holds over 2,500 accessions of macroscopic marine algae from Spain, 1,500 as sheets and 1,000 in glass vials with formaldehyde.

 

PRIVATE COLLECTIONS AND OTHER INSTITUTIONS.

  • Ballesteros (Enrique Ballesteros, Centro de Estudios Avanzados de Blanes, CSIC). holds 600 sheets of benthic marine algae from Catalonia and the Balearic Islands and 200 sheets of exotic algae from the Atlantic African coasts and Mauritius.
  • Fermín Bescansa Casares (Laboratorio de Ficología, Dpto. Biología Vegetal, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de La Coruña). This historic herbarium of 1,000 sheets of benthic marine algae has been recovered for Science thanks to the search carried out by members of the Laboratory.
  • Mª Consolación Fernández (Dpto. Ecología, Facultad de Ciencias, Universidad de Oviedo) maintains 500 sheets of benthic marine algae from the Cantabric Sea.
  • ITAC (Laboratorio de Ficología, Facultad de Biología, Universidad Complutense de Madrid) holds 2,500 sheets and microscopic slides of mostly benthic marine algae of the Iberian Peninsula and a collection of algae of 1,500 sheets from Europe, the Pacific Ocean and Antarctica.
  • Victor López Seoane (Instituto José Cornide de Estudios Coruñeses, La Coruña). This collection comprises 312 sheets of benthic marine algae collected between 1856 and 1985 from the Galician coasts. Some specimens were reviewed by K. Rosenvinge (Dosil et al., 1997).
  • Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales (Madrid) holds a collection of diatoms of marine species from Galicia and, fossil diatoms elaborated by Ernesto Caballero Bellido between 1891 and 1927 . They are stored in microscopic slides and glass vials. Most accessions have no taxonomic determination. Unfortunately, a great part of this collection, donated by its author, seems to have been lost (Sánchez Moreno, 1992; Appendix 47).
  • Joan Rodríguez Femenías (Ateneo de Mahón, Menorca). About 3,000 sheets from the 7,248 sheet collection of this naturalist carried out at the end of last century is deposited at the cultural association Ateneo de Mahón. Unfortunately, this implies a difficult access to this material by Mediterranean ficologists. Most specimens come from the coasts of the Balearic Islands and the rest from several European countries.

 

References:

Álvarez Cobelas, M. & Gallardo, T. (1985) In memoriam Pedro González Guerrero. Anales Jardín Bot. 42:3-7.

Bárbara, I., Cremades, J. & Pérez-Cirera, J.L. (1995) La contribución de Fermín Bescansa Casares a la ficología española. Datos biográficos, estudio de su obra y herbario. Stvdia Bot. 13:39-45.

Conde Poyales, I. (1992) Sobre la colección de algas del Herbario de las Sociedad Malagueña de Ciencias (S. XIX). Acta Bot. Malacitana 17:29-55.

Cremades, J. (1995) El herbario de algas bentónicas marinas de Antonio Cabrera (1762-1827) en el Real Jardín Botánico de Madrid. Anales Jard. Bot. Madrid 52:139-144.

Dosil, F.X., Cremades, J. & Bárbara, I. (1997) El herbario de algas de Victor López Seoane (1832-1900). Actas XII Siposio de Botánica Criptogámica 70-71.

Gallardo, I., Margalef, J.L. & Pérez-Ruzala, I. (1993) Las colecciones históricas de algas españolas. Int. Simp. & First World Congress on Presrv. and Conserv. of Nat. Hist. Col. 2:163-176.

Sánchez Moreno, P.M. (Ed.) (1992) Agustín Barreiro. El Museo de Ciencias Naturales (1771-1935). Museo Nacional de Ciencias Naturales, Madrid.

 

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WEB NEWS*


INTERNET DIRECTORY FOR BOTANY - SUBJECT CATEGORY LIST

A branch of: Lampinen, R., Liu, S., Brach, A.R. & McCree, K. (1996-).The Internet Directory for Botany. -

(http://herb.biol.uregina.ca/liu/bio/idb.html)

 

Anyone who searches the web for botany subjects ends up sooner or later at the Internet Directory for Botany - Subject Category List. Its URL address is worth keeping at the bookmark section of our browser for easy access. The home of the IDB SC List is at http://www.helsinki.fi/kmus/botmenu.html in the Botanical Museum, Finnish Museum of Natural History, Helsinki University, Finland. The subject category list has been maintained by Raino Lampinen since Autumn 1993. It started as a personal bookmark list of botanical gopher sites and www sites, and was made available via WWW in December 1994. In October, 1997, there were about 3,700 botany related links in this index.

The links on this site are divided by subject into the following 18 files: 1. Arboreta and botanical gardens. 2. Biologists’ addresses. 3. Botanical museums, herbaria, natural history museums. 4. Botanical societies, international botanical organizations. 5. Checklists and floras, taxonomic databases, vegetation. 6. Conservation, threatened plants. 7. Economic botany, ethnobotany. 8. Gardening. 9. Images. 10. Journals, books, literature databases, publishers. 11. Link collections, resource guides. 12. Listservers and newsgroups. 13. Lower plants. 14. Other resources. 15. Paleobotany, palynology, pollen. 16. Software. 17. University departments, other institutes. 18. Vascular plant families.

There are mirror sites of the IDB-SC in other European servers (Croatia, Germany, Russia, Spain and Sweden) that can help you get a faster connection.

The other branch of the Internet Directory for Botany is the Alphabetical List (http://herb.biol. uregina.ca/liu/bio/botany.html). The Internet Directory for Botany has received recognition and awards from 3-Star Site Magellan, Education Index Topsite, Iway 500, Next Guide Gold Site and Look Smart Editor’s Choice.

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PROJECTS


ANNOUNCING A TEST AND TRIAL PHASE FOR THE

REGISTRATION OF NEW PLANT NAMES (1998-1999)

 

by L. BORGEN, W. GREUTER, D. L. HAWKSWORTH, D. H. NICOLSON & B. ZIMMER

Officers of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT)

 

INTRODUCTION

 

From the 1st of January 2000, and subject to ratification by the XVI International Botanical Congress (St Louis, 1999) of a rule already included in the International code of botanical nomenclature (Art. 32.1-2 of the Tokyo Code), new names of plants and fungi will have to be registered in order to be validly published. To demonstrate feasibility of a registration system, the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) undertakes a trial of registration, on a non-mandatory basis, for a two-year period starting 1 January 1998. The co-ordinating centre will be the secretariat of IAPT, currently at the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin-Dahlem, Germany. Co-ordination with present indexing centres for major groups of plants is being sought, in view of their possible active involvement at the implementation stage. The International Mycological Institute in Egham, U.K., has already accepted to act as associate registration centre for the whole of fungi, including fossil fungi.

 

Registration procedure

The co-ordinating registration centre (IAPT secretariat), and any associated centre operating under its auspices, will register and make available all names of new taxa, all substitute names, new combinations or rank transfers that are brought to their attention in one of the following ways:

  • by being published in an accredited journal or serial;
  • by being submitted for registration (normally by the author or one of the authors), either directly or through a national registration office;
  • or (for the non-mandatory trial phase only) as a result of scanning of other published information by the registration centres’ own staff.

 

Registration by way of publication in accredited journals or serials

For a journal or serial to be accredited, its publishers must commit themselves, by a signed agreement with the IAPT, to

  • point out any nomenclatural novelties in each individual issue of their journal or serial, either by including a separate index of novelties or in another suitable, previously agreed way;
  • submit each individual issue, as soon as published and by the most rapid way, to a pre-defined registration office or centre.

Accredited journals and serials will be entitled, and even encouraged, to mention that accreditation on their cover, title page or in their impressum.

A permanently updated list of accredited journals and serials is being placed on the World Wide Web (http://www.bgbm.fu-berlin.de/iapt/registration/). This list will be published annually in the journal Taxon.

 

Registration by way of submission to registration offices

Authors of botanical nomenclatural novelties that do not appear in an accredited journal or serial (but e.g. in a monograph, pamphlet, or non-accredited periodical publication) are strongly encouraged to submit their names for registration – and will be required to do so once registration becomes mandatory – in the following way:

  • all names to be registered are to be listed on an appropriate registration form, using a separate form for each separate publication;
  • the form (in triplicate) must be submitted together with two copies of the publication itself, either to a national registration office (see below) or, optionally, directly to the appropriate registration centre. Reprints of articles from books or non-accredited periodicals are acceptable, provided their source is stated accurately and in full;
  • one dated copy of each form will be sent back to the submitting author in acknowledgement of effected registration.

Registration forms can be obtained free of charge (a) by sending a request to any registration office or centre, by letter, fax or e-mail, or (b), preferably, by printing and copying the form as available on the World Wide Web (see above).

Registration offices are presently being established in as many different countries as possible. They will serve (a) as mailboxes and forwarding agencies for registration submissions and (b) as national repositories for printed matter published locally in which new names appear.

A permanently updated address list of all functioning national registration offices is being placed on the World Wide Web (see above). This list will be published annually in the journal Taxon.

 

Registration date

The date of registration, as here defined, will be the date of receipt of the registration submission at any national registration office or appropriate registration centre. For accredited journals or serials (and, for the duration of the trial phase, for publications scanned at the registration centres), it will be the date of receipt of the publication at the location of the registration centre (or national office, if so agreed).

For the duration of the trial phase, i.e. as long as registration is non-mandatory, the date of a name will, just as before, be the date of effective publication of the printed matter in which it is validated, irrespective of the date of registration. Nevertheless, the registration date will be recorded, for the following reasons:

  • to make clear that the name was published on or before that date, in cases when the date of effective publication is not specified in the printed matter;
  • to assess the time difference between the (effective or stated) date of the printed matter and that of registration, since it is envisaged that the date of registration be accepted as the date of names published on or after 1 January 2000.

It is therefore in the interest of every author to submit nomenclatural novelties for registration without any delay, and by the most rapid means available.

 

Access to registration data

Information on registered names will be made publicly available as soon as feasible, (a) by placing it on the World Wide Web without delay in a searchable database, (b) by publishing non-cumulative lists biannually, and (c), hopefully, by issuing cumulative updates on a CD-Rom-type, fully searchable data medium at similar intervals.

 

A CALL TO EVERYONE: HELP TESTING THE SYSTEM SO AS TO MAKE IT WORK

 

To make the test effective and significant, it is important that everyone publishing nomenclatural novelties on or after 1 January 1998 should participate by registering all new names and combinations on a voluntary basis. Please help (a) by doing so yourself and (b) by spreading the message to others!

Do not be put off if shortcomings or errors occur in the initial months. Remember, this is a test phase. Let us know of any bug or crinkle in the system, and we will iron it out. What matters is that everything operates smoothly by the end of 1999, and that by the next Congress all have satisfied themselves that it will.

We believe that registration of new names, once implemented in a functional way, will be a great benefit for all concerned with but little inconvenience for cost – and so did the Nomenclature Section at Yokohama in 1993 feel. Nomenclature must be fit for a good start into the next millennium. Let us work together to make it happen.

 

Contact address:
IAPT Secretariat
Botanischer Garten & Botanisches Museum Berlin-Dahlem
Königin-Luise-Str. 6-8
D-14191 Berlin, Germany.
E-mail
IAPT page

 

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REGISTRATION AS A POSITIVE STEP

 

by K. L. WILSON

 

Registration of nomenclatural novelties seems to me a natural way to go, heading into the 21st Century. It will enable us to find quickly what new names have been published, and to be sure that we have not missed any new name hidden in the paper mountain of botanical literature that comes out each year around the globe. This is particularly important for one-off publications (floras, field guides, etc.), which are notorious for `hiding' new names.

Some people seem to think that registration implies censorship, but this is wrong. As in the current Index kewensis all names will be listed, and without comment as to status, and as soon as received at one of the registration centres. My only caution to those looking at the mechanisms for making registration effective is that they should ensure there is a large network of registration centres or offices spread evenly around the world. This is necessary to make it easy to submit novelties for registration, given the apparently worsening state of mail services in all areas.

 

Contact address:
Royal Botanic Gardens
Mrs Macquaries Road, Sydney
N.S.W. 2000, Australia.

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SEEDS OF Digitalis atlantica, D. nervosa AND D. subalpina

FROM WILD ACCESSIONS NEEDED

 

Study of phytogeography and evolution of

Isoplexis (Lindl.) Benth. and Digitalis L.

 

by JOSÉ A. CARVALHO & ALASTAIR CULHAM

 

This project involves the study of the evolutionary processes and relationships among all species of Isoplexis and Digitalis.

Isoplexis (Lindl.) Benth. is an endemic genus from Macaronesia with four species. Three of them occur in the Canary Islands, I. canariensis (L.) G.Don, I. isabelliana (Webb & Berth) Masf. and I. chalcantha Svent. & O’Shanahan, and the fourth one occurs in Madeira, I. sceptrum (L.fil.) Loud.

The genus Digitalis L., owes its name to the digitus (=finger) flower shape of the species. It is commonly believed to be closely related to Isoplexis, with an African-Eurasian distribution.

In Macaronesia, a number of genera and species have interesting disjunctions in their distributions. One of the aims of this project is to clarify and explain in a better way the Macaronesian / West Mediterranean disjunctions (Bramwell, 1976), represented in this study by the Iberian-Moroccan endemics, Digitalis obscura and Digitalis laciniata, and the species of Isoplexis.

The Isoplexis species are restricted to islands; therefore, conservation issues are being taken into consideration with a present study on the micro-scale variation between / within populations. The analysis of population genetic variability has been carried out and is an important tool towards the understanding of the past and present evolution processes within Isoplexis and in relation to Digitalis.

Seeds from most of the species of Isoplexis and Digitalis have been gathered with exception of three species :

Digitalis atlantica Pomel, D. subalpina Br.-Bl.( D. lutea L. var. atlantica Ball.[ non D. atlantica Pomel]) and D. nervosa Steud. et Hochst. ex Benth. with a geographical area of occurrence predominantly in Algeria, Morocco and in Iran, respectively.

In order to complete this study we are requesting seeds of these two species from wild accessions.

References:

Bramwell, D. 1976. The endemic flora of the Canary Islands: Distribution, Relationship and Phytogeography. In: Biogeography and Ecology in the Canary Islands (G.Kunkel, ed.), 207-240. Monogr. Biol., 30. Junk, The Hague.

Werner, K. 1965. Taxonomie und Phylogenie der gattungen Isoplexis (Lindl.)Benth. und Digitalis L. Feddes Repertorium, 70: 109-135.

 

Contact address:
José A. Carvalho & Alastair Culham
School of Plant Sciences
The University of Reading/ Whiteknights
PO Box 221/ Reading/ U.K.
E-mail: sbrcarva@reading.ac.uk

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MEETINGS


Le IXème Colloque OPTIMA - The IXth colloquium OPTIMA

LIEU ET DATES DU COLLOQUE - LOCATION AND DATES OF THE MEETING

 

Le IXème Colloque OPTIMA se tiendra à Paris, au Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle du 11 au 17 mai 1998. Il sera suivi de deux excursions, au choix, d’une durée de 6 jours.

Les Commissions d’OPTIMA, le Comité international et le Conseil exécutif se rassembleront les 9 et 10 mai.

Les séances plénières se tiendront dans la Galerie de Botanique du Muséum. Les séances non plénières se tiendront dans l’auditorium de la Grande Galerie de l’Evolution du Muséum.

 

The IXth colloquium OPTIMA will be held in Paris, in the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, from the 11th through the 17th of May, 1998. It will be followed by two excursions of the participant’s choice, each lasting 6 days.

OPTIMA's commissions, the international board and the executive council will meet the 9th and the 10th of May.

Plenary lectures will be held in the Galerie de Botanique in the Museum. Other talks will be held in the auditorium of the Grande Galerie de l'Evolution of the Museum.

 

LANGUES OFFICIELLES.

OFFICIAL LANGUAGES

 

Français et Anglais. French and English

 

ENREGISTREMENT. REGISTRATION

 

L’enregistrement des participants et des accompagnateurs aura lieu au Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, 57 rue Cuvier, 75005 PARIS, de 9h00 à 17h00 le 10 et le 11 mai.

 

The registration of participants and accompanying persons will take place at the Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle, 57 rue Cuvier, 75005 PARIS, from 9 a.m to 5 p.m on May 10th and 11th.

 

 

PROGRAMME SCIENTIFIQUE. SCIENTIFIC PROGRAMME

 

Lundi. Monday 11:

Séance d’ouverture. Opening session

 

Allocutions de bienvenue. Welcome greetings
Prof. Francesco di Castri (Montpellier, France) Conférence inaugurale. Plenary lecture : Biodiversité méditerranéenne dans le contexte d’une économie globale. Mediterranean biodiversity in the context of a global economy

 

 

Mardi. Tuesday 12:

Symposium 1 : Les activités françaises en botanique. French activities in Botany.

Organisateur. Organizer : Prof. J. Moret (Paris).

 

Prof. J. Moret Introduction
Prof. M. Barbero, Prof. R. Loisel, Dr. F. Medail, Prof. P. Quezel (Marseille) Biodiversité et signification biogéographique des forêts du Bassin méditerranéen. Biodiversity and biogeographical significance of forests in the Mediterranean basin
Dr. J. Gamisans (Toulouse) Progrès enregistrés dans les connaissances sur la flore et la végétation de la Corse durant les 25 dernières années. Progress in the understanding of corsican flora and vegetation during the last 25 years.
Dr. D. Petit (Limoges), J. Mathez, A. Quaid (Montpellier) Données récentes sur la phylogénie des Cardueae (Asteracea). Recent data on the phylogeny of the Cardueae (Asteraceae).
Prof. Ch. Boudouresque (Marseille) Les algues en Méditerranée : Combien ? Où ? Quelle origine ? Mediterranean Algae : How many ? Where ? Where from ?
Prof. J. Moret Conclusion

 

Symposium 2 : Connaissance et conservation de la biodiversité dans les îles méditerranéennes. Knowledge and conservation of biodiversity in Mediterranean islands.

Organisateurs. Organizers : Dr. L. Olivier, Dr. J.-P. Henry, Hyères (France).

 

Dr. L. Olivier, Dr. J.-P. Henry Introduction
Prof. W. Greuter (Berlin, Allemagne) Diversité des flores insulaires méditerranéennes. Diversity of the Mediterranean insular flora.
Dr. I. Aguinagalde (Madrid, Espagne) Diversité infraspécifique de la flore des îles méditerranéennes. Intraspecific diversity of the Mediterranean island flora.
Dr. D. Jeanmonod (Genève, Suisse) Conservation de la diversité végétale en Corse. Conservation of the plant diversity in Corsica.
Dr. G. Iatrou (Patras, Grèce) Phytodiversité, spéciation et microendémisme dans les îles et îlots méditerranéens. Phytodiversity, speciation, and microendemism in Mediterranean islands and islets.
Dr. L. Olivier, Dr. J.-P. Henry Conclusion

 

Symposium 3 : Taxonomie, distribution et écologie des Bryophytes méditerranéennes. Taxonomy, distribution and ecology of Mediterranean Bryophytes.

Organisateur. Organizer : Prof. F.M. Raimondo, Palermo (Italia).

 

Prof. F.M. Raimondo Introduction
Dr. R. Ros (Murcia, Espagne) Le genre Aloina (Pottiaceae, Musci) dans le Bassin méditerranéen : taxonomie et distribution. The genus Aloina (Pottiaceae, Musci) in the Mediterranean Basin : taxonomy and distribution
Dr. C. Sergio (Lisboa, Portugal) Investigation bryophytique comme base pour la validité de la zone isoclimatique méditerranéenne au Portugal. Bryophytes survey as a basis for the validity of the Mediterranean isoclimatic area in Portugal
Dr. J.-P. Hébrard (Marseille, France) Titre non communiqué. Title to be announced
Prof. F.M. Raimondo Conclusion

 

Mercredi 13. Wednesday 13:

Symposium 4 : Fungal diversity in the Mediterranean area. Diversité fongique dans la région méditerranéenne.

Organisateur. Organizer : Prof. S. Onofri, Viterbo (Italia).

 

Dr. X. Llimona, Barcelona (Espagne) Introduction : Mycodiversity in the Mediterranean area. Diversité fongique en Méditerranée
Dr. G. Zervakis, (Kalamata, Greece) Mycodiversity in Greece. Mycodiversité en Grèce.
Dr. W. Rossi (Italia) & Dr. S. Santamaria (Barcelone, Espagne) Laboulbeniales in the Mediterranean area. Laboulbéniales de la région méditerranéenne.
Dr. G. Moreno Horcajada (Madrid, Espagne) L’importance de la diversité fongique dans la Péninsule ibérique pour l’Europe. Importance of the Iberian Peninsula fungal diversity for Europe
Dr. J. Mouchacca (Paris, France) Biodiversité des découvertes fongiques lors des dernières décades, dans les états arides de l’est méditerranéen. Biodiversity of fungal novelties in the arid east Mediterranean states in the last decades.
Prof. S. Onofri Conclusion

 

Symposium 5 : Plantes et formations serpentinicoles en Méditerranée. Plants and serpentine formations in the Mediterranean.

Organisateur. Organizer : Prof. N. Tadic, Belgrade (Yougoslavie).

 

Prof. N. Tadic’ Introduction
Dr. P. D. Marin & Prof. B. D. Tadic’ (Beograd, Yugoslavia) Serpentine soil and plant diversity. Les sols serpentiniques et la diversité végétale
Dr. N. Diklic & Dr. O. Vasic (Beograd, Yugoslavia) The investigation of the flora and vegetation of the serpentine area in Serbia (Yugoslavia). Prospection de la flore et de la végétation de la zone à serpentine en Serbie (Yougoslavie)
Dr. Stevanovic (Beograd, Yugoslavia) & Dr. G. Iatrou (Patras, Greece) Endemisme and relicts of the serpentine flora of the balkan peninsula. Endémisme et reliques de la flore serpentinique dans la péninsule balkanique
B. Stevanovic, B. Petrokovic, O. Glisic & G. Djelic (Beograd, Yugoslavia) Morphophysiological adaptations of the balkan serpentinophytes. Adaptations morphophysiologiques des serpentinophytes des Balkans
Prof. N. Tadic’ Conclusion

 

Première séance des posters. Posters session 1.

Organisateurs. Organizers : Prof. F. Ehrendorfer, Wien (Austria), Dr. S. Siljak-Yakovlev, Orsay (France).

 

Jeudi. Thursday 14:

Symposium 6 : Phylogénies moléculaires de groupes méditerranéens. Molecular phylogenies of Mediterranean groups.

Organisatrice. Organizer : Prof. N. Galland, Lausanne (Suisse).

 

Prof. N. Galland Introduction
Dr. M. Dolores Lledo (Oxford, UK), M.B. Crespo, M.W. Chase Is Limonium monophyletic ? Evidence from plastid DNA sequence data and morphology. Le genre Limonium est-il monophylétique ? Evidence à partir de séquences d’ADN chloroplastique et de la morphologie.
Dr. M. Cerbah (Orsay, France) Phylogénie moléculaire et évolution chromosomique du genre Hypochoeris. Molecular phylogeny and chromosome evolution of the genus Hypochoeris.
Prof. B. Corrias (Sassari, Italia), Luciano Bullini Molecular Systematics of Mediterranean Orchids. La systématique moléculaire d’Orchidées méditerranéennes
Dr. H. Cotrim (Lisboa, Portugal) The use of RAPD and AFLP markers in the study of genetic diversity within Silene of the Western Mediterranean. L’utilisation de marqueurs RAPD et AFLP dans l’étude de la diversité génétique dans le genre Silene en Méditerranée occidentale.
Prof. N. Galland Conclusion

 

Deuxième séance des posters. Posters session 2.

Organisateurs. Organizers : Prof. F. Ehrendorfer, Wien (Austria), Dr. S. Siljak-Yakovlev, Orsay (France).

 

Vendredi. Friday 15:

Excursion du colloque. Meeting excursion.

 

Samedi. Saturday 16:

Symposium 7 : Les activités françaises en botanique méditerranéenne. French activities in Botany.

Organisateur. Organizer : Prof. J. Moret (Paris).

 

Prof. J. Moret Introduction
Dr. S. Siljak-Yakovlev (Orsay) Etude du genre Reichardia par des outils de la cytogénétique moderne (C- et fluorochromes banding, hybridation in situ). Study of the genus Reichardia using modern cytogenetic tools (C- and fluorochromes banding, in situ hybridization).
Dr. M. De-Bussche, Dr. J. Thompson (Montpellier) Biogéographie, écologie et biologie du genre Cyclamen. Biogeography, ecology and biology of Cyclamen.
Prof. I. Olivieri (Montpellier) Aspects démographiques et génétiques en biologie de la conservation : l’exemple de la Centaurée de la Clape. Demographic and genetic factors in conservation biology : Example of Centaurea corymbosa Pourret
Dr. N. Machon, Prof. J. Moret (Paris) Comment sauver Arenaria grandiflora de la dépression ?. How to save Arenaria grandiflora from inbreeding depression ?
Prof. J. Moret Conclusion

 

Symposium 8 : Data ressources for Mediterranean botanists. Les bases de données pour les botanistes méditerranéens.

Organisateur. Organizer : Dr. Walter G. Berendsohn, Berlin (Germany).

 

Dr. W. G. Berendsohn Introduction
Short presentations on databases and projects. Courtes présentations de bases de données et de projets.
Dr. W. G. Berendsohn Conclusion

 

 

Symposium 9 : La vie végétale aux limites méridionales de la Méditerranée. Plant life at the southern limits of the Mediterranean region.

Organisateurs. Organizers : Prof. K. Müller-Hohenstein, Bayreuth (Germany), Prof. U. Deil, Freiburg (Germany).

 

Prof. K. Müller-Hohenstein, Prof. U. Deil Introduction
Prof. R. Bornkamn (Berlin, Germany) Allochthonous ecosystems-ecosystems without producers. Ecosystèmes allochtones-écosystèmes sans producteurs.
Prof. S. Brullo (Catania, Italy) Phytogeographical considerations about the Cyrenaica. Considérations phytogéographiques sur la Cyrénaique.
Prof. L. Boulos (Caire, Egypt) Plant life in Egyptian desert and some adjacent arid regions. La vie végétale des déserts égyptiens et de quelques régions arides adjacentes.
Dr. E. Le Floch (Montpellier, France) Intérêt de la gestion pastorale pour la conservation des ressources phytogénétiques. The importance of pasture management for the conservation of phytogenetic resources.
Prof. K. Müller-Hohenstein, Prof. Ulrich Deil Conclusion

 

Symposium 10 : Mediterranean databases. Les bases de données méditerranéennes.

Organisateur. Organizer : Dr. Walter G. Berendsohn, Botanic and Botanical Museum, Berlin (Germany).

 

Dr. W. G. Berendsohn Introduction
Short presentations of databases specific to the Mediterranean region or Mediterranean countries. Courtes présentations de bases de données spécifiques à la région ou aux pays méditerranéens.
Dr. W. G. Berendsohn Conclusion

 

Dimanche. Sunday 17:

Symposium 11 : Les usages des plantes méditerranéennes. Usage of plants in the Mediterranean region.

Organisateurs. Organizers : Prof. Uzi Plitmann, The Hebrew university, Jerusalem (Israel), Prof. Amots Dafni, Haifa university, Haifa (Israel).

 

Dr. J.R. dos Santos (Evora, Portugal) Ethnobotanical research. Les recherches en ethnobotanique
Dr. M. Kisley (Ramat Gan, Israel) Ancient and modern glues in the near east. Glues anciennes et actuelles au Proche-Orient
Dr. A. Danin (Jerusalem, Israel) Ropes of native plants, past and present. Cordes de plantes indigènes
Dr. F. Aubraile-Sallenave (Paris, France) Economic plants of the Cucurbitaceae in the Mediterranean region. Les Cucurbitacées d'intérêt économique dans la région méditerranéenne.
Dr. M. Nicoletti (Rome, Italy) Studies on species of the Solanaceae, with an emphasis on Withania somnifera. Etudes d'espèces de Solanacées, et plus particulièrement de Withania somnifera
Prof. U. Plitmann, Prof. A. Dafni Conclusion

 

Symposium 12 : Mediterranean databases. Les bases de données méditerranéennes.

Organisateur. Organizer : Dr. Walter G. Berendsohn, Botanic and Botanical Museum, Berlin (Germany).

 

Computer demonstration. Démonstration sur ordinateurs.

 

Séance de clôture. Closing session

 

Introduction
Exposé des commissions. Reports from the Commissions
Résumé et conclusions. Summary and conclusions
Annonce des prix OPTIMA. Announcement of the OPTIMA prizes
Allocution d’adieu. Farewell greetings
Banquet d’adieu. Farewell party

FRAIS D’INSCRIPTION. REGISTRATION FEES

 

Droits d’inscription

Membres ordinaires d’OPTIMA 1250 FF
Non-membres d’OPTIMA 1500 FF
Accompagnateurs 800 FF
Etudiants (sur justification) 600 FF

 

L’inscription donne droit à tous les documents imprimés du Colloque (programme, volume des résumés, guide de l’excursion, volume des comptes-rendus), le café servi pendant les pauses et les réceptions. L’inscription au banquet final est en sus et se monte, pour chaque catégorie de participants, à 450 FF.

Le paiement du droit d’inscription doit être effectué avant le 31 décembre 1997. Après cette date, les droits seront augmentés de 30%.

 

Registration fees

Ordinary members of OPTIMA 1250 FF
Nonmembers of OPTIMA 1500 FF
Accompanying guests 800 FF
Students (proof required) 600 FF

 

Registrants will receive all documents associated with the colloquium, including volume of abstracts, excursion guide, and volume of summaries. Registrants will be entitled to coffee served during breaks and receptions. Registration for the final banquet costs an additional 450 FF for all classes of participants.

Payment should be made by December 31, 1997. After this date the amount will be increased by 30%.

Dates limites. Deadlines

31 décembre. December 1997 : Paiement des droits d’inscription et inscription pour les excursions post-colloque. Payment of registration fees and registration for the post-meeting excursions.

31 janvier. January 1998 : Réception des résumés. Reception of abstracts

 

Dédit. Refunds

Sans frais jusqu’au 28 février 1998, 50% de frais retenus après. No penalty through February 28, 1998, 50% penalty thereafter

 

VOLUME DES RÉSUMÉS. VOLUME OF ABSTRACTS

 

Les résumés des communications et des démonstrations seront disponibles sous forme d’un volume qui sera distribué lors du colloque.

The abstracts of the talks and the posters will be available in a book provided during the Meeting.

 

PUBLICATION DES COMPTES-RENDUS

PUBLICATION OF THE PROCEEDINGS

 

Les communications et les résumés des démonstrations seront publiés ultérieurement dans le journal Acta botanica Gallica.

Papers and abstracts of the posters will be subsequently published in the Acta botanica Gallica journal.

 

EXCURSIONS POST-COLLOQUE

POST-COLLOQUIUM EXCURSIONS

 

Deux excursions post-colloque sont proposées. Two post-meeting excursions are suggested.

 

1. Sites naturels protégés ou non de Camargue et du Languedoc. Protected or not protected natural sites of Camargue and of Languedoc. Organisateur. Organizer J. Mathez

 

Programme prévisionnel. Preliminary programme

Lundi. Monday 18:

Paris-Montpellier par SNCF. Departure from Paris to Montpellier, by train.

 

Mardi. Thusday 19:

Flore et végétation de la Camargue. Flora and vegetation of the Camargue.

 

Mercredi. Wednesday 20:

La plaine méditerranéenne. The Mediterranean plain.

 

Jeudi. Thursday 21:

De la plaine méditerranéenne aux Causses. From Mediterranean plain to the Causses.

 

Vendredi. Friday 22:

Des Causses à l’Aigoual. From the Causses to the Aigua.

 

Samedi. Saturday 23:

Les Cévennes schisteuses. The schistose Cevennes.

 

Dimanche. Sunday 24:

Fin de l'excursion. End of the excursion.

 

2. Sites naturels protégés ou non de la catalogne. Protected or non protected natural sites of Catalogna. Organisateurs. Organizers A.-M. Cauwet, J. Vallès

 

Programme prévisionnel. Preliminary programme

Lundi. Monday 18:

Paris-Perpignan par SNCF. Paris-Perpignan by train.

 

Mardi. Thuesday 19:

Flore et végétation du littoral sableux et rocheux au sud de Perpignan. Flora and vegetation of the sandy and rocky coast in the south of Perpignan.

 

Mercredi. Wednesday 20:

La réserve de la Massane. Hêtraie remarquable du massif des Albères. Famous beech grove of the massif des Albères.

 

Jeudi. Thursday 21:

Le massif du Néoulos. Rencontre avec les forestiers du versant espagnol qui gèrent la réserve des Albères. Meeting with the Spanish foresters who manage the reserve des Albères.

 

Vendredi. Friday 22:

Cap Creu et cap Norfeu (Catalogne espagnole. Spanish Catalonia).

 

Samedi. Saturday 23:

Réserve des Aiguemolls. Etang de Pau (Figueras, catalogne espagnole). Pau's pond (Figueras, Spanish Catalonia)

 

Dimanche. Sunday 24:

Fin de l'excursion. End of the excursion

.

CORRESPONDANCE. CORRESPONDENCE

 

Pour tout renseignement, contacter
For correspondence, please contact:

Pr. Jacques MORET
Conservatoire Botanique du Bassin Parisien
Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle
61, rue Buffon
75005 PARIS - France
Tel: +33 1 40 79 35 54
Fax: +33 1 40 79 35 53
E-mail: optima@ mnhn.fr

 

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XVI INTERNATIONAL BOTANICAL CONGRESS -

SAINT LOUIS, MISSOURI (1-7 AUGUST 1999)

 

The XVI International Botanical Congress is held under the auspices of the International Union of Biological Sciences (IUBS), most recently through the International Association of Botanical and Mycological Societies (IABMS) of the IUBS. The XVI IBC Saint Louis is being organized by the whole North American botanical community, including botanical, mycological, and ecological societies, universities, botanical research institutions, and other sponsors.

The XVI International Botanical Congress will provide a forum for presentation and discussion of the latest advances in the plant sciences among botanists worldwide.

In the tradition of previous IBCs, the Scientific Program of the XVI IBC will consist of invited oral presentations in Plenary Lectures, Keynote Symposia and General Symposia as well as contributed Poster Sessions. The Scientific Program will be subdivided into the following disciplinary areas:

  1. Botanical Diversity: Systematics and Evolution
  2. Ecology, Environment, and Conservation
  3. Structure, development, and cellular Biology
  4. Genetics and Genomics
  5. Physiology and Biochemistry
  6. Human Uses of Plants: Economic Botany and Biotechnology

 

Any person interested in plant biology is invited to attend the XVI IBC. The full registration fee will allow attendees admittance to all scientific sessions and receptions.


For more detailed information you can consult
the XVI IBC Web site: http://www.ibc99.org


or write to Secretary general, XVI IBC
c/o Missouri Botanical Garden
P. O. Box 299, St. Louis
MO 63166-0299 USA
FAX: 314-577-9589
E-mail: ibc16@mobot.org

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ANNOUNCEMENTS

 

10-15 November 1997

Second World Conference on Medicinal and Aromatic Plants for Human Welfare (WOCMAP II) - Mendoza, Argentina.

Organised by the International council for Medicinal and Aromatic Plants (ICMAP), the International Society for Horticultural Science (ISHS) and the Sociedad Argentina para la Investigación de Productos Aromáticos (SAIPA). The Congress will cover a wide range of topics related to medicinal and aromatic plants as biological and genetic resources for human welfare.The program will include topics such as: phytomedicine, conservation, ethnobotany, phytochemistry, pharmacology, the search for new components, quality control, legislation and databases.

Several trips and excursions are available after the Congress.

Contact:
Dr. A. Bandoni
SAIPA, Av. de Mayo 1324 - 1º piso, oficina 36
1085 Buenos Aires, Argentina
Tel: (54) 13 832360
Fax: (54) 19 617637
E-mail: postmaster@saipa.org.ar

Complementary information at: http://www.ffyb.uba.ar/congresos/wocmap/wocmap.htm

· · · · ·

 

16-20 February 1998

Medicinal Plants for Survival: An International Conference on Medicinal Plant Conservation, Utilization, Trade and Intellectual and Cultural Property Rights.

National Institute of Advanced Studies, Indian Institute of Science Campus, Bangalore, India.

Contact:
The Conference Secretariat, FRLHT
No. 50, MSH Layout, 2nd Stage, 3rd Main
Anandnagar, Bangalore - 560024, India
Tel: (91) 80 333 6909/0348
Fax: (91) 80 333 4167
E-mail: root@ frlht.ernet.in

· · · · ·

 

26 April -1 May 1998

V Symposium of the Ibero-Macaronesian Association of Botanical Gardens - Funchal, Madeira, Portugal

Contact:
Jardim Botânico da Madeira
Caminho do Meio, Bom Sucesso
P-9050 Funchal, Madeira, Portugal
Tel: (35) 191 200 2000
Fax: (35) 191 200 2006.

· · · · ·

 

9-13 June 1998

Planta Europa: Second European Conference on the Conservation of Wild Plants - Uppsala, Sweden.

Contact:
Johan Samuelson, ArtDatabanken, SLU, Swedish Threatened Species Unit
Swedish University of Agricultural Sciences
PO Box 7007, SE-75007 Uppsala, Sweden
Tel: (46) 18 67 3409
Fax: (46) 18 67 3480
E-mail: PlantaEuropa98@ dha.slu.se

· · · · ·

 

14-19 June 1998

The IX International Congress on Plant Tissue and Cell Culture - Jerusalem

Contact:
IX IAPTC Congress, KENEX, Organisers of Congresses and Tour Operators, Ltd.
PO Box 50006, Tel Aviv 61500, Israel
Tel: (972) 3 5140000
Fax: (972) 3 5175674
E-mail: PLANT@Kenes. ccmail.compuserve.com

· · · · ·

 

6-9 July 1998

Pollen and Spores: Morphology and Biology - U.K.

This conference is organized by the Linnean Society Palinology Specialist Group in collaboration with the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and the Natural History Museum, London.

Contact:
Lisa von Schlippe
Conference Administrator, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew
Richmond, Surrey, TW93AB, U.K.
Fax: (44) 0181 332 5176
E-mail: l.von.schlippe@ rbgkew.org.uk

· · · · ·

 

19-25 July 1998

Conservation Biology at the Molecular Level: Identifying Management and Evolutionary Units - Florence, Italy.

A symposium to be held in association with the VII International Congress of Ecology-1998.

Contact:
Dr. Tim King or Dr. R. Kent Schreiber
US Geological Survey, Leetown Science Center
1700 Leetown Road, Kearneysville
West Virginia 25430, USA
E-mail: Tim_King@usgs.gov

· · · · ·

 

10-15 August 1998

VIIth IOPB Symposium: Evolution in Man-made Habitats - Amsterdam

The symposium of the International Organization of Plant Biosystematists will comprise six non-concurrent plenary sessions and specially scheduled poster sessions. The topics are: 1. Evolution of disturbed habitats; 2. Evolution of crops - Domestication: simulating evolution; 3. Evolution of crops - Mapping of special traits; 4. Evolution of invasive plant species - Adaptation and life cycle; 5. Evolution of crop-wild relative complexes; 6. Evolution of invasive plant species - Apomixis: clonal vs. sexual speciation. A four-day post-symposium excursion will visit a series of dune habitats along the Dutch coast.

 

Contact:
Dr. Hans den Nijs
ISP-Hugo de Vries Laboratory
Kruislaan 318
1098 SM Amsterdam, The Netherlands
Tel: (31) 20 525 7660
Fax: (31) 20 525 7662
E-mail: IOPB98@ bio.uva.nl

· · · · ·

 

23-28 August 1998

Sixth International Mycological Congress - Tel Aviv, Israel.

Contact:
Congress Secretariat
P.O. Box 50006, Tel Aviv 61500, Israel
Tel: (972) 3 5140014
Fax: (972) 3 5175674
E-mail: MYCOL@ Kenes.ccmail.compuserve.com

· · · · ·

 

14-18 September 1998

Fifth International Botanic Gardens Conservation Congress-Cape Town, South Africa.

Contact:
Prof. Brian J. Huntley
National Botanical Institute
Private Bag X7, Claremont, South Africa 7735
Fax: (27) 21 761 4687
E-mail: bgci98@nbict.nbi.ac.za.

· · · · ·

 

21-25 September 1998

XV Eucarpia General Congress "Genetics and Breeding for Crop Quality and Resistance" - Viterbo, Italy.

The XV Congress of the European Association for Research on Plant Breeding.

Contact:
XV Eucarpia Congress-Genetics and Breeding for crop Quality and Resistance
University of Tuscia
01100 Viterbo, Italy
Fax: (39) 761 357256
E-mail: eucarpia@unitus.it
Complementary information at: http://www.unitus.it/confsem/eucarpia/eu.html

· · · · ·

 

28 - September 1998

Monocots II: The 2nd International Conference on the Comparative Biology of the Monocotyledons and 3rd International Symposium on Grass Systematics and Evolution - Sidney, Australia

Contact:
Karen Wilson
Monocots II, Royal Botanic Gardens
Mrs. Macquaries Road, Sidney NSW 2000, Australia
Tel: (61) 2 9231 8137
Fax: (61) 2 9251 7231
E-mail: karen@ rbgsyd.gov.au

Back to index

 


NOTICES OF PUBLICATIONS

by Werner Greuter

 

(((((((((((((((

((((((((

(((

 

 

Index


OPTIMA

 

  1. Werner Greuter (ed.) – Proceedings of the VII OPTIMA Meeting, Borovec, 18-30 July 1993. Part two: poster presentations [Bocconea, 5(2)]. – Herbarium Mediterraneum Panormitanum, Palermo, 1997 (ISBN 88-7915-005-7). Pages 395-931, black-and-white illustrations, paper.

The second, concluding half of the Proceedings volume of the Borovec Meeting of OPTIMA is devoted to the poster presentations. On 529 printed pages (discounting title pages and index), it brings the scientific papers corresponding to 75 of the 110 posters that were on exhibit during the VII OPTIMA Meeting. All contributions have been positively reviewed before being accepted for publication, which vouches for good quality standards of the contents.

The Meeting itself had been remarkably successful in offering to botanists of the region an international stage for presenting their scientific results and, conversely, in demonstrating to a wide range of participants the astounding diversity and quality of research that is presently in progress in the areas surrounding the Mediterranean Sea, the Balkan countries in particular. The present volume, mirroring faithfully what was presented at the Meeting, conveys the same positive impression to an even wider public. For several of the authors represented this has been the first and may for long remain the unique opportunity to share their knowledge with a world-wide audience. Besides, the fact that the flora of the Mediterranean area is still incompletely known is documented by the presence of no less than six newly described species of flowering plants (belonging to the genera Allium, Bellevalia, Bromus, Silene, Thymelaea, and Tulipa), plus one hybrid subspecies in Verbascum.

Only five of the papers are authored by botanists who are not residents of a Mediterranean country. Within the Mediterranean proper, Italy (19 contributions) and the Iberian Peninsula (6) are well represented, but the Balkan countries (45!) clearly predominate, with no less than 29 papers from the host country of the Meeting, Bulgaria, and 11 from the war-stricken states of the former Yugoslav Federation (but none, regrettably, from Albania). The English language (68 papers) largely wins over the French (7). W.G.

  1. Benito Valdés & Julio Pastor (ed.) – Proceedings of the VIII OPTIMA Meeting, Sevilla, 25 September - 1 October, 1995 [Lagascalia, 19]. – Universidad de Sevilla, Sevilla, 1997. 942 pages, black-and-white illustrations, paper.

It is tempting to compare the Sevilla Symposium proceedings volume with the one for the Borovec Meeting, just mentioned, so as to point out their similarities and differences. Both were published almost simultaneously, in May and early June, respectively (the printed dates being somewhat fallacious), and the overall page number is similar. The Sevilla volume, which includes the address list of participants as an extra bonus, devotes 421 pages to the lectures and 486 to the poster presentations, the corresponding figures for the Borovec proceedings being 384 and 529. Also, the Sevilla volume reproduces the symposium programme as originally printed, so that one may ascertain which authors have changed their title, and to what extent (in one case, in fact, the subject has changed completely).

The most striking difference is, of course, the speed of production. It took Valdés and Pastor one year less than I needed to edit the texts of the lectures, and a full two years less for the poster papers. For this they are to be warmly congratulated. Speed has its price, of course – and I am not alluding to the few typos that a keen eye may care to spot: many of the notoriously lazy (or over-committed) potential authors just didn’t make the deadline and got cut out. The printed volume has one of two plenary lectures, two thirds (33 of 49) of the symposium and round-table contributions, and far less than one half (57 of 130) of the poster presentations. Even so, it is sizeable enough!

The book is truly impressive by its variety and general interest, which makes it worth while studying it with care. It is particularly pleasing to note that taxonomy plays a major role. The three longest papers are in the kind of revisions, being devoted to the systematics of Ibero-Maghrebine Delphinium subg. Delphinium (24 pages), Vicia sect. Hypechusa (25 pages), and Italian Stachys sect. Eriostemum (no less than 51 pages). There are new subspecies described or combined in Sicilian Brassica, newly described species in Arrhenatherum, Delphinium, and Centaurea, and in the latter genus, several new sections and subsections.

Quite naturally, the location of the symposium had its bearing on the subjects treated. When in Borovec the clear emphasis was on Balkan botany, it is here placed on the central and, principally, western Mediterranean area. The notorious anglophile unbalance is also slightly alleviated, with as many as 17 out of 91 papers being written in French.

It is fair to conclude by publicly acknowledging the dept of gratitude that OPTIMA and its members have towards Benito Valdés and his colleagues and sponsors in Sevilla. Not only did they succeed in organising one of the most noteworthy OPTIMA Meetings ever, but in addition they managed to print the proceedings volume entirely on their own funds. Once more – and hopefully not for the last time – our Organisation has thus profited from substantial, generous sponsorship and support. W.G.

Index


Dicotyledones

  1. Magnus Lidén & Henrik Zetterlund – Corydalis. A gardener’s guide and a monograph of the tuberous species. – Alpine Garden Society, Pershore, 1997 (ISBN 0-900048-66-2). 144 pages, 45 black-and-white figures, 36 maps, 125 colour photographs on 24 extra plates, coloured frontispiece, boards with dust jacket.

This remarkable product of a symbiosis between a taxonomist and a horticulturist is well worth mentioning, even in a purely Mediterranean context. Under Grey-Wilson’s expert editorship, Lidén and Zetterlund have produced an extraordinarily appealing book that will doubtless prove their misgivings wrong when they modestly fear that "it will not be perfect for either the botanist ... or the gardener".

There are well known trends of fashion in gardening and horticulture, such as the historically famous "tulipomania", or later on the rhododendron boom, or much more recently, the craze for "carnivorous" plants. Among the most striking of these epidemic explosions, as usual setting off in Britain and yet to fully hit the continent, is Corydalis. Just look at the gorgeous pictures in this book, and you will understand why. Your next move may well be an order to the nearest well stocked plant dealer.

Corydalis belongs to the Fumariaceae, here defined as comprising two subfamilies, the Hypecooideae (watch the double -o-!) and the Fumarioideae, about 20 genera with 560 species in all. Magnus Lidén has long acquired justified fame as the world authority on the group; and the botanical garden in Gothenborg, where both authors are based, obviously holds the most incredibly diverse collection of its wild representatives.

Corydalis is a fairly huge genus, with perhaps 440 species, many of them little known. It is currently subdivided into 3 subgenera and 34 sections, only 5 of which qualify as tuber-bearing. [Incidentally, the single most irritating trait of the book is that sectional epithets (as usual, abusively treated as single names), contrary to e.g. the subgeneric ones, are never italicised.] China with its 300-odd mostly endemic species is the centre of diversity of the genus. However, a majority of the 95 species belonging to the tuberous sections, which are fully monographed here, are found in S.W. Asia and the eastern Mediterranean area. It is they that are most popular in gardens, or have become so since "corydalomania" was set off in 1981 following Brian Mathew’s lecturing on the topic at a rock garden plant conference in Nottingham. Yet the Chinese taxa, mostly non-bulbous, are catching up. A fair selection is mentioned, though not fully treated, in a concluding chapter.

While I always like good, user-friendly monographs in a general way, I find the kind here presented outright adorable. Perhaps it is the light-handed mix of science and friendly talk that makes the difference. I for one cannot believe that botanists mind if, in a serious text, they "have to put up with pots and poetry", as the authors put it. As to the gardeners, for whom I cannot speak, "the vast amount of petty scientific data" will do them lots of good. Botanists and gardeners alike will, at any rate, be fascinated by the thrilling beauty of the colour photographs that illustrate most of the species – the best means, for sure, of spreading the Corydalis "plague". W.G.

  1. Eugenia Routsê – Biosustêmatikê meletê tês sectio Acrocentron (Cass.) DC. tou genous Centaurea L. stên Ellada. – PhD Thesis, Patras University, Patra, 1993. [2] + vi + 343 pages (some as folded insets, blank pages unnumbered); black-and-white illustrations, colour photographs; paper.

Centaurea is arguably the most diverse genus of the Greek flora, and sect. Acrocentron the second largest of its sections, after sect. Acrolophus which had been similarly treated in 1980 by Routsi’s present supervisor, Theodoros Georgiadis (see OPTIMA Newslett. 12-13: 35. 1982). The PhD thesis of Evyenia Routsi, being a taxonomic revision of all 31 Greek taxa (23 species) of C. sect. Acrocentron, is thus a major contribution in terms of Greek phanerogamic botany, especially if one considers that almost two thirds of the taxa (20, to be exact) are endemic to the country.

Basically this is a classical revision in the monographic style, supplemented by special chapters on morphology, chromosome numbers, numerical phenetics, pollen morphology, and sesquiterpene lactone chemistry.

The results are perhaps not spectacular, no new species having been brought to light, but they are well presented, and the conclusions, convincingly argued. There are a number of taxonomic and nomenclatural novelties at the secondary ranks, with none of the new names being correctly indexed in the last Index kewensis database update, which is why I detail them here: Centaurea subsect. Atropurpureae Routsi & T. Georgiadis (type: C. atropurpurea Olivier; p. 14), subsect. Achaiae Routsi & T. Georgiadis (type: C. achaia Boiss. & Heldr.; p. 14), and subsect. Graecae Routsi & T. Georgiadis (type: C. graeca Griseb.; p. 15) [all apparently validated by a Latin description and type indication as per Art. 22.5, although perhaps doubtfully so in view of Art. 37.4]; C. laconica var. arachnoidea Routsi (p. 63); C. redempta var. macracantha Routsi (p. 69) and subsp. cytherea (Rech. f.) Routsi & T. Georgiadis (p. 70); C. rupestris subsp. parnonia (Halácsy) Routsi & T. Georgiadis (p. 130) and subsp. kozanii Routsi & T. Georgiadis (p. 131). The two last-named were again proposed as "new" in the following year, by the same authors, in a paper in Candollea (and so listed in Index kewensis), while in another, parallel 1994 publication (in Nordic journal of botany) they correctly cited the thesis as validation place, yet not preventing Index kewensis from misquoting a third one of their subspecies names.

The habit of validating new names in theses with a limited printing and distribution, yet published in a technical sense, is perhaps to be discouraged (although priority considerations and the risk of never seeing such results published "properly" must also be borne in mind), but when such validations happen, authors should at least make sure that the relevant indexing services can keep track; at any rate, they should carefully avoid republishing the same names as "new" elsewhere later on. Well, these admonitions, for what they are worth, will become largely irrelevant if and when registration of all new names through an apposite registering mechanism becomes mandatory, hopefully as from the year 2000.

This being said, let us rejoice in the fact that the University of Patras continues to produce skilled and gifted new plant taxonomists worthy of the tradition established by Dimitrios Phitos and his pupils. Thanks to the Patras team, and to equally active if less taxonomically orientated Institutes at other Greek universities, botanical science in Greece manages to keep pace with the explosive development of the plant sciences that one observes today in many Mediterranean countries. W.G.

Index


Monocotyledones

  1. Zoila Díaz Lifante & Benito Valdés – Revisión del género Asphodelus L. (Asphodelaceae) en el Mediterraneo occidental [Boissiera, 52]. – Conservatoire botanique, Chambésy, 1996 (ISBN 2-8277-0068-9). 189 pages, black-and-white illustrations, laminated cover.

The title is too modest: this is in effect a world monograph of Asphodelus, except for the fact that specimen citations and detailed distribution maps are limited to the western half of the Mediterranean area (from Tunisia and S. Italy westwards) plus the Atlantic Islands. Indeed, the analysis of intraspecific variation, and the resulting infraspecific classification, may be less elaborate outside that core area, and is certainly most thorough for the Iberian Peninsula, France, Italy, and Morocco, where field studies have been conducted by the authors on no less than 800 native populations. The treatment includes full keys, synonymies, descriptions, and illustrations of habit and analytical details, plus innumerable, often lengthy comments on various correlated problems. Special studies on the karyotype, pollen morphology, etc. have also been used for the purposes of the present revision, although their results have been published elsewhere in greater detail.

Although the total range of the genus extends from the Cape Verde Islands and the Azores throughout the Mediterranean area and eastwards across S.W. Asia to India, all of its species are present in the much narrower core area referred to above. They are 16 in all, comprised in 5 sections: no less than 10 of them (2 sections) are endemic to the core area, the exception being the four widespread, well-known Asphodelus ramosus, A. albus, A. tenuifolius, and A. fistulosus, as well as the two Saharo-Arabian elements, A. refractus and A. viscidulus. Not surprisingly, a conspicuous number of infraspecific taxa (subspecies and varieties) have been described as new, or had their name and status changed, in the pages of this revision.

Zoila Díaz Lifante has devoted most of her young and busy life to the study of her pet genus. Her detailed results are scattered over no less than 16 different papers, published alone or with others, so that a synthesis as here presented was indeed badly needed. She may now breathe more freely, and find that other plants as well exist in her native Spain that are worth looking at. W.G.

  1. Robert Portal – Festuca du Massif Central. Guide pratique pour leur étude. – Published by the author, 16 rue Louis Brioude, F-43750 Val-Près-Le Puy, 1996. 116 pages, many drawings, with plastic cover sheets and clamp back.

Amateur botanist and keen grass fan Robert Portal, already the author of a compendium of French brome-grasses (OPTIMA Newslett. 30: (8). 1996), now ventures to introduce his fellow botanists to the haunted world of fescues. The apparently modest territory to which he confines his effort does not, in reality, make this a trivial undertaking: no less than 40 species and subspecies of Festuca are found within the limits of the French Massif Central, which is a significant portion of the European diversity of the genus; and 15 of them, moreover, have been originally described and named based on material from this area.

When reviewing Kerguélen & Plonka’s monographic book on the fescues of France, a much more scholarly exercise on which the present essay largely builds, I wrote [in translation]: "I believe that with such a book I might chance to succeed [in identifying my Festuca specimens on my own]" (OPTIMA Newslett. 25-29: (14-15). 1991). With Portal’s unpretentious new tool, the chance (time permitting) finds itself greatly improved. It will become obvious to the reader that initially Portal was facing exactly the same problems as anyone who for the first time approaches this unpalatable genus – but having solved them, he now successfully uses his undeniable didactic skill to help others do the same. He will tell you – not by long strings of words but by means of instructive sketches – how to decide whether a leaf blade is flexible or rigid; how to make a transverse section of that blade with minimal equipment, on your office desk; how, having done so, to interpret what you are actually seeing under the binocular in terms of the usual diagrammatic drawings of sclerenchyma tissue and vascular bundles found in the literature.

The core of the booklet: the detailed and careful descriptions of the 40 taxa treated as well as the excellent drawings of habit and analytical details illustrating them, is a major asset for anyone studying the flora of the central parts of France. The general introduction, however, is much more: it may function as the diving-board for anyone, in Europe or elsewhere, who has the courage to jump into the cold waters of fescue identification. W.G.

Index


Floras

  1. Santiago Castroviejo & al. (ed.) – Flora iberica. Plantas vasculares de la Península Ibérica e Islas Baleares. Vol. V, Ebenaceae-Saxifragaceae. Vol. VIII, Haloragaceae-Euphorbiaceae. – Real Jardín Botánico, C.S.I.C., Madrid, 1997 (ISBN 84-00-07641-9 & 84-00-07654-0). lv + 320, lv + 375 pages, map and drawings, cloth with dust-cover.

The enthusiastic reviews of earlier volumes of this Flora (OPTIMA Newslett. 20-24: (22-23). 1988; 25-29: (22-23). 1991; 30: (10). 1996) are applicable without restriction to the present ones. One will notice that between them they leave a gap in numbering, corresponding to two large and complex families that will take their time to be completed: the Rosaceae (vol. 6), hopefully to be published at the end of this year, and the Leguminosae (vol. 7), which might be ready by the end of 1998. Users of the Flora will doubtless appreciate the thoughtfulness of the editors, not to let them wait for longer than is necessary for the subsequent family treatments when they were already finalised.

Both new volumes are thinner than average, which is partly due to the constraints imposed by the sequence of the families and their varying size. They are not particularly rich in treatments of notoriously critical genera, although the larger ones: Saxifraga with 58 Iberian species (vol. 5) of which one (S. felineri P. Vargas) is newly described, Euphorbia with 54 (vol. 8), Sedum with 31 (vol. 5), and to a somewhat lesser extent Thymelaea with 21 (vol. 8) and Androsace with 14 (vol. 5), all have their problems and difficulties, showing centres of diversity, as a whole or in part, in the Iberian Peninsula. Each of these genera stands for one of the medium-sized families here treated, to which the Onagraceae (4 genera, 32 species) and Lythraceae (3 and 14, respectively), both of vol. 8, may be added. The remaining 22 families (6 in vol. 5, 16 in vol. 8) are either mono- or bigeneric in the territory of the Flora, and several are not at all native there.

The general presentation meets the highest standards, be it for the quality of the print and layout, binding, paper, or – most strikingly – the illustrations; meaning that it equals what we got accustomed to by the foregoing volumes. Perhaps the most striking asset of the Flora, at least for an experienced editor’s eye, is however the rigour with which it sticks to its elaborate, well conceived and utterly user-friendly pattern and style. Once achieved, this will be the outstanding monument of collaborative Flora publishing of our time. W.G.

  1. Daniel Jeanmonod & Hervé Maurice Burdet (ed.) – Compléments au Prodrome de la flore corse. Valerianaceae, par M.-A. Thiébaud. – Conservatoire et Jardin botaniques, Ville de Genève, 1996 (ISBN 2-8277-0812-4). 116 pages, black-and-white illustrations, laminated cover.

As stated in my last review relating to this Flora (in OPTIMA Newslett. 30: (11). 1996), "what now remains to be done are essentially the Rubiaceae and Compositae, plus a few minor families". The Valerianaceae are one of those few minor families. The fact that their revision runs over far more than one hundred pages, while puzzling in itself, makes one expect to find a critical, thorough treatment with interesting new insights at its base. Alas, this hope is disappointed.

The Valerianaceae are represented by 4 genera and 13 fairly uncritical species in Corsica. Even Valerianella, which in the past has posed some riddles to botanists (now largely resolved), is poorly represented on the island, with 5 widespread representatives plus 3 rare and erratic aliens. Allowing for the bulky specimen enumerations that are part of the style of the flora (12 pages in all) and the numerous maps and excellent illustrations that, as always, greatly enhance its usefulness, one nevertheless wonders how so many pages could have been filled. The answer in a nutshell is: badly!

I must leave it to those who are proficient in French to put my assertion to the test, that Thiébaud’s commentaries are not only convoluted and difficult to understand, but most often pointless. Let me just mention the case of Valeriana rotundifolia where the reader, having coped with one full page of taxonomic comments, still does not know why and on what criteria this is maintained as a species separate from V. montana – when it is not even mentioned as a synonym in Flora europaea, and when the general distribution, given as "southern and central Europe" under both recognised varieties, is certainly less than convincing from a phytogeographical point of view.

But let me get down to concrete points of criticism. To begin with, the nomenclatural treatment is appallingly inadequate for a product from the institute that used to be Briquet’s. True synonyms and mere misapplications are listed indiscriminately, an example being Valeriana coronata which is cited in synonymy of both Valerianella discoidea (ascribed to "(L.) All.", having been so misapplied by Allioni) and Valerianella coronata (incorrectly ascribed to "(L.) Willd.", when the real authorship is (L.) Mill.). Illegitimate nomenclatural synonyms are not designated as such. There is a lengthy discussion of the status and typification of Valeriana mixta L., in which that name is "typified" by a description (an option unavailable under the Code), when there is original material in the form of two Morison figures on which the name can and must be typified (and should then presumably be proposed for rejection).

Species recorded from Corsica in error are given full treatment, with their own descriptions and inclusion in the keys, thus inducing into error the reader who does not or cannot read the comments written in French. But the nicest story perhaps is that of the first Corsican record of Valerianella hirsutissima, based on two specimens allegedly collected by Boissier near "Bastia" in May 1842. How can a Geneva staff member be so careless and naive! It is common knowledge that in May 1842 Boissier collected in and around Athens, and in his Flora orientalis he mentions V. hirsutissima "in arvis ... Atticae (... Boiss.!)". It is a safe bet that the labels of the specimens cited by Thiébaud from Bastia in Corsica have "Bæotia" inscribed instead.

Last but not least, taxonomy. There is worse, in this treatment, than the futile attempt to propose a novel infrageneric grouping based on the random sample of the few Valerianella species present in or erroneously reported from Corsica. On one hand, Thiébaud describes and names two new varieties for taxa of very doubtful value, one being an intermediate between two named varieties, the other a mere form with hairless fruits. On the other hand, he uncritically accepts the conclusions from Martin & Mathez’s (most interesting, and guardedly worded) study and lumps two generally recognised species as mere "morphotypes" of a single species. The fact is that Martin & Mathez observed mendelian segregation of parental fruit characters in hybrids between the two "morphotypes", which may (but must not necessarily) mean that fruit morphology is under mono- or oligogenic control. Still, conclusions are premature (and if they will have to be drawn, they will likely affect many more species), and as the two parental taxa are clear cut, breed true, and the hybrid has but reduced fertility, there is little to be gained by merging them at this stage.

When starting on this review I proposed to be kind. I now realise that I have utterly failed, and I offer my apologies. Let me at least conclude by wishing this Flora that it may be continued in a way that is worthy of the foregoing instalments, and of the great tradition of Briquet and Geneva botany. W.G.

  1. Konrad Lauber & Gerhart Wagner – Flora helvetica. Flora der Schweiz. Flore de la Suisse. Flora della Svizzera. 3750 Farbphotos von 3000 wildwachsenden Blüten- und Farnpflanzen einschliesslich wichtiger Kulturpflanzen. Artbeschreibungen und Bestimmungsschlüssel. Bestimmungsschlüssel zur Flora helvetica mit zeichnungen von André Michel. Paul Haupt, Bern, 1996 (ISBN 3-258-05405-3). 1613 + 267 pages, one hard cover volume with colour photographs and maps + 1 paperback with transparent plastic jacket, drawings. – Price (for both): SFr 128.

Do you need proof of the fact that the Swiss are perfectionists? zealous? dedicated? well organised? Here it is: Lauber & Wagner’s new Swiss Flora, resulting from the work of 10 years and a double lifetime’s experience, sets entirely new standards in Flora writing. This is the botanical manual of the future: tailored for the consumer who has but little time to spare yet wants easy and reliable results; pleasant for the eye; crammed with shorthand details in minimal type size, so that you have it ready at hand but need not notice; unobtrusively scientific to the bone; and of course also available as a CD-ROM enabling you to get your tailored selection of on-screen images and texts by using a multitude of criteria (geography, flowering time, habitat, toxicity ...) or by means of a practical multi-access key. [This device – same price as the book – has not however been tested by the present reviewer.]

The authors have settled on the magic number of 3000 taxa (species or subspecies) for their Flora. To end up with this figure they had to finesse by including some important cultivated plants as well as a number of frequent casuals, while relegating 38 taxa, for various good reasons, to being treated by a mere note. They have also, understandably, had to limit to a representative choice the splits that one tends to recognise in the highly critical genera Alchemilla, Rubus, Hieracium and Festuca (and to adopt a wider than usual species concept in others, such as Taraxacum). Yet, just imagine: 3000 taxa, including the rarest ones perhaps only found once, and some but recently discovered, each represented by one or often two colour photographs that do justice to the claim of being at the same time beautiful, technically brilliant, and diagnostically valuable! In all, 3750 colour pictures of which 3749 are from Lauber’s gigantic collection of over 50,000 slides! [Lauber whom you may glance peeping in sideways, with an impish smile, in the picture of wickedly phototoxic Heracleum mantegazzianum.]

Treatments include diagnostic descriptions, vernacular designations in Switzerland’s three main national languages, flowering period, habitat preferences, Swiss distribution, and indication of frequency. A special feature are the mini-maps of distribution in Switzerland, of less than postage-stamp size (use a hand-lens!), which nevertheless – based on Welten & Sutter’s chorological Atlas and its published or unpublished updates – manage to differentiate between recent mapping data and old herbarium and literature records. The scientific plant names used are "dernier cri" fashion: for the first time, new Swiss consensus nomenclature of Aeschimann & Heitz (see OPTIMA Newslett. 31: (11). 1997) has been applied. The fact that the identification keys of the printed version are published in the form of a separate brochure is also a genuine asset froma user’s (if not a librarian’s) standpoint, since it eases parallel consultation of keys and images on the working desk and also enables one to carry along the keys alone for quick checking or preliminary identification in the field.

The authors of this book are genuine enthusiasts. The reviewer cannot but share their enthusiasm in view of the result. W.G.

  1. Flora e Shqipërisë. Flore de l’Albanie. – 2 (ed. Xhafer Qosja, Kolë Paparisto, Mustafa Demiri, Jani Vangjeli & Emin Balza), 1992, 446 pages, 777 figures, cloth; 3 (ed. Xhafer Qosja, Kolë Paparisto, Jani Vangjeli & Babi Ruci), 1996, 331 pages, 604 figures, hard cover. – Akademia e Shkencave e Republikes Shqipërisë, Instituti i kerkimeve biologjike, Tiranë.

Volume 1 of this new national Flora of Albania had been published in 1988 under the editorship of Paparisto, Demiri, Mitrushi & Qosia. It had the same taxonomic coverage as the first volume of Flora europaea (pteridophytes, gymnosperms, and dicots up to and including the Platanaceae, in the Engler sequence). The second volume (Rosaceae to Umbelliferae) is coextensive with Flora europaea vol. 2, while the third (Pyrolaceae to Campanulaceae) extends somewhat beyond vol. 3 of the same work, leaving the Compositae as the only untreated dicot family. Parallelism between the two Floras goes so far that even the anomalous position of the Rubiaceae in Flora europaea has been adopted in the Albanian Flora, and more importantly, they both so far coincide in their 4-year rhythm of publication.

The one major asset that is proper to this Flora are the illustrations. With a few exceptions, every recognised species is fully illustrated by an obviously original line drawing, most often showing analytical details to aid identification. These are relatively simple drawings, but they show a remarkably good likeness with the plants portrayed and will prove invaluable for the users, especially those unfamiliar with the Albanian language (the only French portions of the books being their second title pages). The text treatment is full and modern, including indication of Albanian vernacular designations, chromosome numbers, habitat, phytosociological appurtenance, and overall distribution. Subspecies, the lowest-level taxa to be recognised, are keyed out separately. Hybrids are not mentioned. Synonymy is a weak point, being extremely scanty – which sometimes makes one wonder whether a given taxon (e.g., Onosma albanica) has been merely forgotten or is considered to be synonymous (with, e.g., O. arenaria).

It should be mentioned that Albania, together with Greece, was so far about the only European country not disposing of its modern national Flora. It is fortunate, and most timely, that this should now change (as it hopefully will, before long, also for Greece). Those owning the new Flora will find it an outstanding work in every sense, including format, since the transverse quarto volumes, while ideally suited to accommodate text and figures side by side in parallel columns, are a less than ideal fit for standard-sized book shelves. W.G.

  1. A. L. Tahtadzjan (ed.) – Flora Armenii. Tom 9. Campanulaceae, Asteraceae. – Koeltz Scientific Books (CR), Havlickuv Brod, 1995 (ISBN 80-901699-7-x). 676 pages, map, 262 full-page figures, cloth. Price: DM 180.

The economic situation of the Republic of Armenia, perhaps the hardest up among the heirs of the old Soviet empire, is not such as to easily permit scientific publication, important though it may be. It was indeed a great problem to have this last dicot volume of the Armenian national Flora published, and it has taken years to find an appropriate solution. Production has eventually become possible thanks to the combined efforts of Nora Gabrieljan, the secret driving force behind the whole enterprise, and the courageous publisher Sven Koeltz who unselfishly provided funds for preparing and printing the copy. Both can be sincerely congratulated on the result. Volume 9, printed in the Czech Republic, differs from its predecessors mainly in its somewhat smaller paper size as well as the significantly improved quality of paper, print and binding. The style, general layout and presentation of the data have remained unchanged. Apart from Armenian vernacular plant names and the alternative title page, which appear in the beautiful but unfamiliar Armenian script, the whole text is in Russian. The plentiful, skilfully drawn original illustrations of plant habit and analytical details are undoubtedly a major asset of the book.

Volume 9 comprises the treatments of 101 genera belonging to just two families, with 478 species in all (this figure includes 22 species fully treated but unnumbered because their presence in Armenia has not yet been definitely established). The acknowledged volume editors are Vanda Avetisjan (who contributed many of the individual accounts) and Marina Oganesjan (who authored the Campanulaceae); George Fajvus did the technical editing. Nora Gabrieljan herself and many of her research team (e.g., Evgenija Avetisjan, Nasik Handzjan, L. Manukjan, Kamilla Tamanjan, and Nora’s daughter Marjam Agababjan) wrote major contributions. Centaurea (46 species), though unnaturally and too narrowly delimited, is by far the largest genus, followed by Cousinia (27), Cirsium and Campanula (21 each). Funnily (and enviably) for a European botanist, Hieracium with its 13 species is but eleventh in order, and Taraxacum (6 species) lags far behind.

The Compositae are subdivided into two subfamilies, Cichorioideae (Juss.) Chev. 1828 (incl. Cynaroideae (Durande) Chev. 1828; here named Lactucoideae (Cass.) Lindl. 1829) and Asteroideae (Cass.) Lindl. 1829 (Astereae Cass. 1819; here lacking author citations), represented by 5 and 7 tribes, respectively. Among the latter, the Cynareae Lam. & DC. 1806 (here: Cardueae Cass. 1819) with 181 species, Cichorieae Lam. & DC. 1806 (here: Lactuceae Cass.; mistakenly attributed to Adanson) with 112 species, and Anthemideae Cass. 1819 with 61 species predominate. Tribal and subfamilial classification follow modern standards of synantherology, but the names used, as demonstrated by the foregoing synonymies, need correction. No such restrictions apply at the lower taxonomic levels, where the synonymic treatment is exemplary.

With its beautiful blueprint of that most awkward among Compositae, Gundelia tournefortii, on the inside of the cover boards, this volume is a worthy conclusion to the treatment of the dicotyledons in the Flora of Armenia. Two monocot volumes are yet to come, and one hopes and wishes with our Armenian colleagues that they may be produced under equally favourable circumstances, just perhaps more speedily. Several of the earlier volumes (the first dates from 1954!) are now out of print and are becoming extremely rare, yet Koeltz still offers the complete run (vols 1-8) at moderate DM 810 in his catalogue. W.G.

  1. Karl Heinz Rechinger (ed.) – Flora iranica. Flora des iranischen Hochlandes und der umrahmenden Gebirge. Persien Afghanistan, Teile von West-Pakistan, Nord-Iraq, Azerbaidjan, Turkmenistan. Lfg. 172, Chenopodiaceae, by I. C. Hedge, H. Akhani, H. Freitag, G. Kothe-Heinrich, D. Podlech, S. Rilke & P. Uotila. – Akademische Druck- und Verlagsanstalt, Graz (ISBN 3-201-00728-5, the whole work). 371 pages, 8 figures, 212 extra plates, paper. Price: öS 4482.

The final count-down is on. This is the last but four of the major steps toward completion of one of the outstanding monumental Floras of our Century (see OPTIMA Neswlett. 30: (14-15). 1996). On the slightly detached throne of his ninety-plus years, the general editor, Karl Heinz Rechinger, must be looking with a pleased smile upon the most recent of his kids, for which Ian Hedge (doubtless heavily supported by Karl Heinz’s spouse Willy, familiar to insiders as the vital though anonymous background actress) has assumed the functions of volume editor.

The Chenopodiaceae are one of the most important families for the Flora iranica region, not because they would have a primary evolutionary centre there (in fact, the rate of endemism is relatively low) but because their representatives tend to play a dominant role in the arid and saline habitats so widespread in that area. They are also a notoriously difficult group, due to vegetative plasticity and late maturity of the diagnostically essential fruits and seeds. Even the specialist is often at a loss when asked to identify sterile or immature specimens. The abundant recent material available to the authors of this account, collected by the late specialist Aellen, numerous Iranian botanists, and the principal authors themselves, is at the basis of a much improved circumscription and diagnostic characterisation of the critical chenopodiaceous taxa of the region.

Species diversity, if not endemism, is considerable. there are 44 chenopodiaceous genera with 227 species in the area. Hedge has authored the treatments of all small and medium-sized genera (except Spinacia, by Uotila), plus Atriplex (21 species). The four other major genera were assigned as follows: Salsola (48 species) to Freitag and (for sect. Salsola) Rilke, Chenopodium (23) to Uotila, Suaeda (16) to Akhani & Podlech, and Halothamnus (15) to Kothe-Heinrich. As a separate index to nomenclatural novelties is (regrettably) wanting, it may be useful to point out that three of the species are described as new (Salsola maimanica Freitag, S. makranica Freiteg, and Suaeda baluchistanica Akhani & Podlech), and three new subspecific combinations in Salsola are proposed (on pp. 248, 250, and 252).

As usual, the very generous illustration deserves a special mention. Most of the extra plates are photographs of selected herbarium specimens which, while of high technical standard, are perhaps less useful in this family than in others – especially when reduced in scale. The scanning micrographs of Chenopodium seeds (plates 25-26) are therefore particularly welcome, as are the drawings of habit and detail. Since the overview of illustrations, announced in the acknowledgements on p. 357, has been omitted due to some technical oversight, the following digest (including data kindly provided by Ian Hedge) may be of use:

  • Fig. 1 (p. 8) and 2 (p. 10) illustrate the morphological glossary by Hedge; they are initialled gar, which stands for Glenn A. Rodrigues, Edinburgh;
  • Fig. 3-6 (pp. 158-161) represent details of Salsola; they are unsigned but due, not to the text author (Freitag) but to Udo Schradin, Kassel; the same may or may not apply to plate 212, with similar details;
  • Fig. 7-8 (pp. 257-258), with fruiting perianths of Halothamnus, are reproduced from Kothe-Heinrich’s monograph (in Biblioth. Bot. 143: fig. 18-19, 21, 23, 26, 33, 35, 43, 47, 55. 1993) and are similarly due, not to that author but to Udo Schradin;
  • Plates 8-24 (Chenopodium) and 27-30 (Spinacia) show general habit and (often) fruiting perianths and are signed Marja Koistinen, Helsinki;
  • The scanning micrographs of plates 25-26 were made by Vanamo Salo, Helsinki;
  • The specimen photographs (Plates 1-7, 31-211) were made by Debbie White and Phil Hyne, Edinburgh.

Four strides are left: Pteridophyta, Cyperaceae, Rubiaceae, and (the real giant) Astragalus. One on each of Rechinger’s successive birthday tables? This would, for sure, be the best recipe for keeping him active and healthy! W.G.

 

  1. M. Assadi, M. Khatamsaz, V. Mozaffarian & A. A. Maassoumi (ed.) – Flora of Iran. No. 18: Mimosaceae, by M. Zaeifi.– Research Institute of Forests and Rangelands, [Tehran], "1995". 35 + [2] pages, figures, paper.

I have had repeatedly the opportunity here to present the successive instalments of Flora of Iran (see OPTIMA Newslett. 25-29: (31-32). 1991; 30: (15). 1996; 31: (8). 1997), commending it unrestrictedly for use by those who are familiar with Persian language and Arabic script. The present, new issue, covering a small but important family of woody plants with three genera (Acacia, Albizia, Prosopis) and 10 native species in Iran, makes no exception.

As compared to Rechinger’s Flora iranica treatment of 10 years before, a number of changes may be noted. They concern one additional species (Acacia tortilis), the dismissal of another one (A. farnesiana) as non-native, and two name changes: "A. hydaspica" to A. ehrenbergiana, and "Prosopis glandulosa" reduced to synonymy under P. juliflora. Each of the 10 native species is illustrated on a full page, with a silhouette drawing of its general habit usefully complementing the careful drawings of detail. One minor criticism that one might make is of a technical kind, concerning the rather poor printing quality (partly too pale, and partly with smeared ink). W.G.

Index


Flower books

  1. Peter Schönfelder & Ingrid Schönfelder – Die Kosmos-Kanarenflora. Über 850 Arten der Kanarenflora und 48 tropische Ziergehölze. – Franckh-Kosmos, Stuttgart, 1997 (ISBN 3-440-06037-3). [2] + 319 + [2] pages (incl. inside back cover), drawings, maps, and colour photographs, hard cover. Price: DM. 58.

This is not really, as one might at first suspect, a new competitor for Hohenester & Welss’s recent Excursion Flora for the Canary Islands (see OPTIMA Newslett. 30: (9-10). 1996) but rather its complement and potential companion in the field. While similar in size and general appearance, it is not, as the other book, a complete pocket Flora with keys for identification, and it does not primarily address the botanical crack but rather the leisurely plant lover and spare-time wildflower fan. In the present, new book, identification keys stop at the family level, and designating the main portion, with its systematically arranged illustrations and short descriptive texts, as "Bestimmungsteil" [identification part], as was done in the table of contents (but not in a subtitle in the book itself), is plainly abusive. Similarly abusive is the claim, raised via the subtitle, that over 850 wild species are covered in addition to 48 ornamentals: the number of species illustrated and fully (if shortly) described barely exceeds 500 – the difference perhaps pertaining to species briefly mentioned in the form of notes.

What makes it worth while possessing this book are clearly the illustrations, most particularly the gorgeous and excellently printed colour photographs. It is not the first time that I am compelled to express my admiration for the photographic skills of this same author team – think of their 1984 guide to Mediterranean plants published in the same series of "Kosmos Naturführer" (OPTIMA Newslett. 17-19: 39. 1985), and of their recent photographic Atlas of Mediterranean and Canary plants (OPTIMA Newslett. 30: (16). 1996) on which the present book partly draws. The introductory general chapters, too, are generously illustrated in colour. Besides, there are minute maps showing the island-by-island distribution of the illustrated species, line drawings of leaves to accompany the key to sterile trees printed on the unpaged cover board insides, and nice but much too small drawings of (alas, unnamed) representative species to illustrate the family key. W.G.

  1. Christopher North – A botanical tour round the Mediterranean. – New Millennium, London, 1997 (ISBN 1-85845-075-6). xiv + 502 pages, figures and colour photographs, laminated cover. Price: £ 17.50.

A peculiar book, really. Not a useful one, I should say, but having that particular charm to it that only the British can really appreciate. As the cover text puts it, "essentially a traveller’s guide for amateur plant enthusiasts to be carried on journeys or browsed through on cold winter evenings". When the same text goes on to mention "its glorious colour plates and its mass of excellent line drawings" I feel more doubtful. The line drawings are plentiful but crude, and the 8 colour plates which, adding frontispiece and front cover, show 18 species in all, are of lower than average quality.

All depends on your expectations. If you want an account of where a botanically interested traveller may go in the vast area between southern Portugal and Israel, and what he or she may see, you will be reasonably well served – the qualification "reasonably" referring to poor indexing (although this is not stated, the plant name index refers only to the figures, of which a single one is cited even if there are two, and not at all to mere mentions in the text) and to the fact that Tunisia alone stands for the whole of North Africa. If you want to recognise or identify plants you find in a given region, look for some other book. But above all, do not take this to be a scientifically accurate source of knowledge.

To test reliability I have leafed through the thirty pages devoted to the island of Crete, with which I am reasonably familiar. No qualms as to the trips advised, their choice being a matter of taste and opportunity. But forgetting about misprints and misspelling of plant names, or use of different names for the same species ("Precopiana" cretica on p. 343, Symphytum creticum on p. 351), there are some data that are clearly in error.

Muscari macrocarpum, once doubtfully reported from the Sitia area, is not to be found near Paleohora (as on p. 336) where it may have been confused with Bellevalia brevipedicellata. The White Mountain endemics Chionodoxa cretica and C. nana are indeed conspecific, and synonymous with Scilla nana, as discussed on p. 341, but the plant on Mt Psiloritis (p. 352) is not S. cretica, nor is that of the Dhikti Mts S. nana (p. 358), since both belong to a second species, S. albescens. Crocus veluchensis is a spring-flowering mountain plant of mainland Greece and the Balkans but does not flower in autumn in the Samaria gorge, where perhaps C. oreocreticus may have been confused with it. Romulea ramiflora, an inhabitant of coastal marshlands, may well grow near Paleohora (p. 336) but not on the Lasithi plateau (p. 357) where R. bulbocodium is to be expected. Neither Alyssum idaeum (p. 345), an endemic of Mt Psiloritis, nor Ranunculus "laterifolius" (p. 346), which has its only Cretan occurrence farther down on the Omalos plain, occur in the higher parts of the Lefka Ori. And I could go on almost indefinitely.

Once again: the book has its charm, so do not lightly dismiss it on the basis of the above shortcomings; but do not take it too seriously, either. W.G.

  1. Walter Strasser – Pflanzen des Peloponnes (Süd-Griechenland). – Gantner, Vaduz, 1997 (ISBN 3-904144-05-7). –[2] + 321 pages, figures, laminated cover. Price: DM 40.

A practical field vademecum, following faithfully the model and pattern of the same author’s booklet on East Aegean plants (see OPTIMA Newslett. 30: (19). 1996). It consists essentially of simple and unpretentious drawings which however, having been made by a connoisseur, are faithful and detailed enough to be truly helpful for identification purposes. Added underneath are extremely synthetic characterisations of morphology and habitat, for the purpose of cross-checking. Only for a few polymorphic groups are identification keys provided in addition, at the end (Medicago, Trifolium [where T. xanthinum is lacking], yellow-flowered Compositae) or intercalated in the main treatment (Bromus). There is a one-page explanation in English, including translation of the abbreviations used (except do. = ditto, judged to be self-explanatory), which may come in handy for the non German-speaking.

The species are again arranged in more or less artificial groups (pteridophytes, grass-like plants, orchids, woody plants [except dwarf shrubs], plus six groups defined by flower colour of which the last, two-coloured flowers, is new). [By two-coloured, also species in which flower colour changes during anthesis as well as those with contrasting colours between corolla and bracts are meant.] While this grouping is rather awkward at first and may cause difficulties and doubts, it is apparently less of a repellent to non-botanical users than a natural arrangement by families.

What is truly impressive is the degree of coverage attained, with a large majority of the native flora being treated (very common and extremely rare species being omitted, along with "hopeless" cases such as Taraxacum agamospecies and most fescue grasses) and 90 % of those treated, illustrated. The "extremely rare" category includes species just recently rediscovered, perhaps not available to the author for drawing, such as Adonis cyllenea, Biebersteinia orphanidis, and Helichrysum taenari. Most of the endemics, even when rare and very local, are however included. A few of the c. 1800 drawings, relating to species with alternative flower colour, are duplicated. W.G.

Index


Floristic inventories and checklists

  1. Toni Nikolic (ed.) – Flora croatica Index florae croaticae. Pars 2. [Natura Croatica, 6, Suppl. 1]. – Hrvatski prirodoslovni muzej, Zagreb, 1997. 232 pages, laminated cover.

The new checklist of the vascular flora of the Republic of Croatia is a project that started in 1993 and is making quick progress towards its completion. The first volume, not available to us in print, was issued at the end of 1994 as Supplement 2 to Natura Croatica, vol. 3, and is said to comprise 116 pages. It is now accessible online (http://pubwww.srce.hr/botanic/cisb/doc/flora/check/popisFH.html) and covers the pteridophytes, gymnosperms and first part of the dicots: subclasses Magnoliidae, Ranunculidae, Hamamelididae, Caryophyllidae, and the first three families of the Dilleniidae (Guttiferae, Elatinaceae, Paeoniaceae). The present, second volume deals with the remainder of the Dilleniidae, the Rosidae, and the beginning of the Asteridae (orders: Gentianales, Oleales, and Solanales). The major three among the 71 families (393 genera) included this time are the Leguminosae (60 genera), Rosaceae (33), and Umbelliferae (65).

The treatment is simple and straightforward. Genera are arranged alphabetically within families, as are species within genera. The accepted names of species are cited with their place of original publication, synonyms are merely listed without full reference to their source and without distinction between homotypic and heterotypic ones. No distributional data are provided, but some additional information is given, such as [Balkan] endemic status and IUCN red data category. The question mark is used freely but indiscriminately (which is a real pity), to indicate either doubtful taxonomic status or doubtful presence in Croatia. Vernacular designations are provided only at generic level, pending further investigation. The most important and welcome feature are extensive additional literature references for individual taxa (families, genera, species), listed alphabetically under the respective plant name at the end. This very extensive and well researched bibliography, running over 103 pages, adds considerable weight and value to the efforts of our Croatian colleagues and makes their inventory worth consulting for many a European botanist. W.G.

  1. Lance Chilton & Nicholas J. Turland – Flora of Crete. A supplement. – Marengo, Retford, 1997 (ISBN 1-900802-45-7). 125 + 47 pages, maps, laminated cover. Price: £ 10.

An impressive amount of new floristic information has accumulated in the four years since Turland & al.’s Flora of the Cretan area was published (see OPTIMA Newslett. 30: (23-24). 1996). The supplementary data were partly found in (mostly very recent) publications, but a considerable share are the authors’ own findings, made during no less than 10 campaigns to Crete and (once) Karpathos in the years 1993 to 1996. New discoveries of note include a number of species formerly unknown or known only with doubt from the area; a second European occurrence of Androcymbium rechingeri, on Karpathos; the first find of Centaurea lancifolia outside of the White Mountains, in the Dhikti massif; and conversely, the discovery of the supposed Dhikti endemic, Vincetoxicum creticum, on W. Cretan Mt Krioneritis – a particularly good terrain for floristic novelties, which also yielded the second known locality of Dianthus pulviniformis.

The present supplement, designed for being used in conjunction with the Flora, includes not only these major novelties but countless updates of detail, most often concerning habitat and altitudinal range – fields in which the authors’ growing experience has led to many improvements. No less than 282 distribution maps have either been added or republished in updated or amended form, which is about 15 % of the total! The republished maps include those 7 which had originally been published with a wrong caption, as I had pointed out in my earlier review – but if the authors’ cursory statements are to be taken at face value, there must have been a cryptic second edition of their Flora (they speak of a "second printing"), nowhere quoted as such and unknown to me, in which 5 of the 7 original errors had already been rectified. Obviously a nice little riddle for some future bibliographic crack. W.G.

Index


Excursions

  1. Ina Dinter – Botanische Exkursion. Zypern – der nördliche Landesteil – vom 10.-24. März 1996 [Ausarbeitung]. – Privately assembled/duplicated, D-74348 Lauffen, 1996. 79 numbered sheets, black-and-while illustrations, paper with plastic front cover sheet.

 

  1. Ina Dinter – Botanische Studienreise. Insel Korfu (Ionische Inseln Griechenland) vom 11.-26. April 1997. – Privately assembled/duplicated, D-74348 Lauffen, 1997. [2] pages + 94 numbered sheets, black-and-while illustrations, paper with plastic front cover sheet.

Ina Dinter’s botanical excursions are among the best organised of their kind. Each is obviously preceded by a full-scale preparatory excursion, which is thoroughly documented for the benefit of the participants. In addition, as soon as the excursion is over its results are worked out and distributed among the members of the group. In other words, two documents may exist for one and the same excursion, which from the outer look are almost identical. In the case of the Cyprus excursion, the version reviewed last time (in OPTIMA Newslett. 31: (12), No. 25. 1997) was the preliminary one, dated December 1995 in the impressum and available during the excursion, in which the plant lists and their cumulation at the end refer to the pre-excursion of March 1995. The new version cited above is dated August 1996 and has the lists completely re-made, to include only the plants that were actually seen in 1996 (except that the numerical list of 1995 specimens has been maintained). An entirely new addition is a list of birds observed by the participants.

The Kerkira excursion guide, dated August 1997, corresponds to the elaborate post-excursion version. In its make-up it is very similar to the previous item, with general introductory matter (including [authorised!] re-publication of an earlier text by Willing, on the island’s biota and vegetation) preceding the detailed excursion accounts and cumulative plant list (from which the two last localities were accidentally omitted). Unexpectedly, the reader will find an original contribution to German lyrics at the end (two pages of limericks by one of the participants) as well as, perhaps more importantly, a hitherto unpublished update of Borkowsky’s 1994 Checklist of the flora of Corfu, incorporating that author’s new floristic finds of the last three years. The orchidophile will rejoice at Ms Dinter’s colour photograph of Orchis albanica Gölz & H. R. Reinhard, a recent addition to the Greek flora. W.G.

  1. Lance Chilton – Plant list for El Hierro [Canary Islands], ed. 2. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1995 (ISBN 1-900802-31-7). 16 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Plant list for La Palma [Canary Islands], ed. 2. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1994 (ISBN 1-900802-34-1). [20] pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Plant list for La Gomera [Canary Islands], ed. 4. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1995 rev. 1997 (ISBN 1-900802-29-5). 20 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Plant list for Tenerife [Canary Islands], ed. 2. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1994 (ISBN 1-900802-35-x). [30] pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Plant list for Gran Canaria [Canary Islands], ed. 2. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1995 (ISBN 1-900802-30-9). 28 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

  1. Lance Chilton – Plant list for Fuerteventura [Canary Islands], ed. 2. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1994 (ISBN 1-900802-28-7). [16] pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Plant list for Lanzarote [Canary Islands], ed. 2. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1994 (ISBN 1-900802-32-5). [15] pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Plant list for Madeira including Porto Santo and Desertas islands. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1995 (ISBN 1-900802-33-3). 28 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Plant list for the Pyrenees. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1997 (ISBN 1-900802-56-2). 36 pages, paper.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Provisional plant list for Corfu (Greece, Ionian Islands), ed. 2. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1995 rev. 1996 (ISBN 1-900802-17-1). 24 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Keith Allen & Lance Chilton – Plant list for Aghios Georgious (North Corfu), ed. 2. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1995 (ISBN 1-900802-16-3). 24 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Plant list for Stoupa, Peloponnisos 1992-93. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1993. 19 pages, paper.

 

  1. Lance Chilton –Plant list for Crete (Greece: South Aegean). – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1994 (ISBN 1-900802-18-x). 40 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton –Plant list for Georgioupolis, Kavros & Lake Kournas, ed. 2. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1995 (ISBN 1-900802-19-8). 16 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton –Plant list for Plakias, Crete, ed. 10. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1993 rev. 1997 (ISBN 1-900802-23-6). 24 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton –Plant list for Karpathos (Greece: South Aegean). – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1995 (ISBN 1-900802-20-1). 24 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton –Plant list for Rhodes (Greece: East Aegean Islands). – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1993. 24 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Keith Allen & Lance Chilton – Plant list for Lindos & Pefkos, Rhodes, ed. 3. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1995 (ISBN 1-900802-22-8). [16] pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton –Plant list for Skala Potamias, Thasos (Greece: North Aegean Islands: Northeast Thasos).. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1997 (ISBN 1-900802-51-1). 12 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton –Plant list for Lesvos (Greece: East Aegean Islands). – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1997 (ISBN 1-900802-50-3). 24 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton –Plant list for Samos (Greece: East Aegean Islands), ed. 2. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1994 rev. 1996 (ISBN 1-900802-25-2). 24 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton –Plant list for Kokkari, Samos (Greece: East Aegean Islands), ed. 2. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1994 rev. 1996 (ISBN 1-900802-21-x). 24 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Plant list for Cyprus. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1997 (ISBN 1-900802-55-4). 36 pages, paper.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Plant list for Akamas, Cyprus. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1995 (ISBN 1-900802-27-9). 16 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

These are checklists in the classical sense of the word: unpretentious lists on which you may hook off the species you have found, or underscore those you are looking for. They are always to be used in conjunction with a flora or field guide (suggestions are included) where author citations for scientific names (lacking in the lists) may be found. Companion publications with routes for suggested trips, in which the area covered is defined, are available in several cases (see below). Sometimes, non-exhaustive lists of certain animals (e.g., birds and butterflies) are appended, and a few of the pamphlets are delivered with updates on loose inserted sheets. Indication of native or endemic status and English names are provided routinely where appropriate. W.G.

  1. Lance Chilton – La Gomera for walkers. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1996 (ISBN 1-900802-52-x). 40 pages, maps, 1 folded colour map, paper and plastic pocket. Price: £St 6.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Walks in the Aghios Georgious area, Northwest Corfu. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1996 (ISBN 1-900802-38-4). 20 pages, maps, 1 folded colour map, paper and plastic pocket. Price: £St 5.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Six walks in the Stoupa area. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1996 (ISBN 1-900802-14-7). 20 pages, maps, 1 folded colour map, paper and plastic pocket. Price: £St 5.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Six walks in the Georgioupolis area. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1996 (ISBN 1-900802-02-3). 20 pages, maps on cover insides, 1 folded colour map, paper and plastic pocket. Price: £St 4.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Ten walks in the Plakias area, ed. 4. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1996 (ISBN 1-900802-09-0). 20 pages, maps, 1 folded double-sided colour map, paper and plastic pocket. Price: £St 5.00.

  1. Lance Chilton – Seven more – and more challenging – walks in the Plakias area. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1996 (ISBN 1-900802-07-4). 32 pages, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – walks in Northeast Thasos. Walks in the Skala Potamias area. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1997 (ISBN 1-900802-49-x). 24 pages, maps, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – walks in North Lesvos. Walks from Anaxos and Petra. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1997 (ISBN 1-900802-48-1). 24 pages, maps, paper. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – walks in the Kokkari area of Samos. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1996 (ISBN 1-900802-44-9). 28 pages, maps, 1 folded colour map, paper and plastic pocket. Price: £St 5.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – Eight walks in the Lindos & Pefkos area. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1994 (ISBN 1-900802-04-x). 19 pages, maps, 2 folded double-sided maps (1 in colour), paper and plastic pocket. Price: £St 3.00.

 

  1. Lance Chilton – walks in the Akamas area. Includes Polis, Latchi, Neohorio and Drousha. – Marengo Publ., Retford, Notts., 1996 (ISBN 1-900802-41-4). 24 pages, maps, 1 folded colour map, paper and plastic pocket. Price: £St 5.00.

Classical hikers’ itineraries, giving detailed descriptions of paths and sometimes taverns, but little if any botanical data. Maps and booklets can be obtained separately: please enquire at the new address of Marengo Publishers: 17 Bernard Crescent, Hunstanton, Norfolk PE36 6ER, U.K. W.G.

  1. Ralf Jahn (ed.) – Kreta. Botanische Exkursion für Fortgeschrittene, 14.-27. April 1996 – Institut für Botanik, Universität Regensburg, [1996]. 49 pages, black-and-white illustrations, loose sheets.

A small group of 15 teachers and students of Regensburg University, headed by Peter Schönfelder, must have spent a busy fortnight in Crete. They collected or noted 874 taxa in 70 different localities, corresponding to 5413 floristic records in total. The core data are concentrated on just over 12 pages. The remainder of the account essentially consists of descriptions of itineraries and characterizations of collecting localities, illustrated by some photographs. Hidden in the general species list and easily overlooked are three corrections to the captions of the photographs in Jahn & Schönfelder’s recent excursion flora (see OPTIMA Newslett. 30: (13). 1996): "Erysimum candicum" being in fact E. raulinii, "Arum cyrenaicum" representing A. concinnatum, and "Bellevalia bevipedicellata" corresponding to a still undescribed, tetraploid vicarious taxon from eastern Crete. W.G.

Index


Chorology

  1. Jaakko Jalas & Juha Suominen – Atlas florae europaeae. Distribution of vascular plants in Europe, 11, Cruciferae (Ricotia to Raphanus). – Committee for Mapping the Flora of Europe & Societas Botanica Fennica Vanamo, Helsinki, 1996 (ISBN 951-9108-11-4, -09-2). 310, pages, maps, paper.

The newest addition to the mammoth project of mapping the vascular flora of the whole of Europe is devoted to the second half of the family Cruciferae. It includes 494 maps, numbered 2434 to 2927, and the usual large amount of critical corollary matter, based on an incredibly complete survey of the relevant literature. One more fascicle, and the maps corresponding to vol. 1 of Flora europaea will be complete. Dare we extrapolate and predict that the Atlas when achieved will consist of 60 parts, and that completion will take another 120 years? This might seems a sound prediction, but would fail to take into account the change that has taken place since my first forecast was made (3-4 centuries for completion; see OPTIMA Newslett. 10/11: 37. 1980), when fascicle 5 had been published. Comparing fasc. 1-6 with fasc. 7-11, one finds that the average map output has doubled (to 150 maps per year) and fascicle size has even more strongly increased (from 170 to 380 maps per fascicle). make your own prediction!

Since, however you count, none alive is likely to see the end of the venture, quality of the available product is more interesting than speed, for the time being. Quality is indeed impressive as far as the taxonomic and nomenclatural frame is concerned, into which much effort has gone and in which doubtless much expert advice from the extensive network of collaborators has been incorporated. One gets the impression that the Atlas is much more thorough, careful and complete an update than the second edition of Flora europaea, volume 1, has been. Thanks to the tabular listing of changes in the Atlas with respect to both editions of the Flora, this is a testable hypothesis. Since the time lag between the two editions of the Flora was 29 years and that between ed. 2 of the Flora and fasc. 11 of the Atlas, 3 years, our null hypothesis must be that, quality standards being equal, at least 90 % of the changes of the Atlas with respect to ed. 1 of the Flora will have been implemented already in the latter’s ed. 2. For the purpose of the present comparison, I shall make a distinction between taxonomic changes (synonymisation or resurrection of taxa, transfer in rank or position), floristic changes (disagreement on presence or absence, for Europe as a whole), and nomenclatural changes (but discounting mere changes in spelling or authorship); for the purpose of this comparison, I have counted newly described taxa as belonging for one half to taxonomy (newly distinguished taxa) and one half to floristics (newly discovered ones).

The results are quite significant. Of 186 taxonomic changes in the Atlas with respect to the Flora, ed. 1, only 66 (35 %) had been effected in ed. 2. one may argue that taxonomy is often a matter of opinion, and that it is natural that the Flora was reluctant to incorporate changes unless they were demonstrably needed. But how about the other categories of change, for which there are factual reasons? Well, the situation there was found to be even worse: only 31 % (15 out of 48) of the floristic changes, and merely 25 % (6 of 24) of the nomenclatural changes had entered the 2nd edition of Flora europaea. These figures do not even yet include cases such as Thlaspi rotundifolium (see OPTIMA Newslett. 31: (11). 1997), in which the Atlas corrected an error introduced by ed. 2 with respect to ed. 1 of the Flora. I dare say that the original hypothesis has been proved beyond possible doubt. Yet, do not take this result as disparaging for Flora europaea: it is fully to the credit of the Atlas, and demonstrates how much is to be gained in such a project by involving the greatest number possible of people (as was done for the first but not the second edition of Flora europaea).

While the taxonomic and nomenclatural judgement on the Atlas can use but the most flattering terms, it is more difficult to form an opinion on the maps themselves. Too much depends on the quality of the data delivered by the individual correspondents and country co-ordinators, on which the secretarial team at Helsinki can take but little influence. Fortunately, the days when whole countries failed to submit data and had to be left blank on the maps are past. But there is still at least one case in which, obviously, a country just assumes that a "widespread" taxon occurs in each and every square, irrespective of the existence of concrete data supporting such presence. When you look at the odd distribution patterns in the maps of, e.g., Camelina, Neslia, and Raphanus taxa, each with a solid black island covering the whole of Bulgaria, you will see what I mean. Perhaps some educational effort might, in such blatant cases, be appropriate. W.G.

  1. Oriol de Bolòs i Capdevila, Xavier Font i Castell, Xavier Pons i Fernández & Josep Vigo i Bonada (ed.) – Atlas corològic de la flora vascular dels Països Catalans. Vol. 5, 6 [ORCA: Atlas corològic, 5, 6]. – Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Secció de Ciències Biològiques, Carme 47, E-08001 Barcelona, 1995, 1997 (ISBN 84-7283-301-1 & -361-5). [375], [713] pages, maps 619-800, 801-1145 + 816bis, 863bis, 981bis; paper.

The floristic mapping scheme for Catalonia, governed by the Organisation for the Mapping of plants of the Catalan Countries (ORCA; see OPTIMA Newslett. 20-24: (45-46). 1988; 30: (28). 1996; 31: (13-14). 1997) appears to have attained its full cruising speed. In less than two years 530 maps have been published, as compared to 618 in the preceding ten years.

Whereas the presentation of data in the early volumes was apparently random, the new volumes (as already vol. 4 and most of vol. 3) are arranged strictly in conformity with the sequence and numbering of the taxa in Bolòs & al.’s Flora manual dels Països Catalans. There is a single exception: map 619 is a replacement for map 537 (Ranunculus muricatus) where there had been a trascription error. Otherwise, vol. 5 is entirely devoted to the two families Saxifragaceae and Rosaceae, and vol. 6 to the legumes. A few of the numbered taxa of the Flora are missing, but this is apparently due, either to there being no reliable data on native occurrence available (in the case of some very rare, doubtfully recorded or doubtfully native plants), or to difficulties in distinguishing between taxa (as in Rubus, where in three cases series are mapped rather than species, or in Alchemilla, where some of the subspecies [or microspecies] are missing). In other words, mapping of the first 650 numbered species of the Flora manual (with four possible exception mentioned in OPTIMA Newslett. 31: (14). 1997, and disregarding possible future updates) is now complete.

Among the maps, there are six that deserve being mentioned as presenting new additions with respect to the inventory of the Flora manual: Nos 638, Saxifraga cotyledon L.; 644, S. carpetana Boiss. & Reut.; 816bis, Genista lobelii DC. subsp. lobelii; 863bis, Astragalus alopecuroides subsp. grosii (Pau) Rivas Goday & Rivas Mart.; 981bis, the recently described Ononis rentonarensis M. B. Crespo & L. Serra; and 1045, Trifolium phleoides Pourr. ex Willd. Not surprisingly, the increased floristic activities resulting from the mapping project bear fruit. W.G.

  1. L. Delvosalle – Dixième série de précartes de l’Institut Floristique Franco-Belge. [Documents floristiques, 5(4)]. – Institut Floristique Franco-Belge, Lille, & Centre régional de Phytosociologie / Conservatoire Botanique National, Bailleul, 1995. [1] + 94 sheets, paper. Price: FF 140.

This is not a self-contained publication. Not even through the title may one guess what it is about, nor is there any introductory material deserving that designation. What the pamphlet consists of is a series of 59 grid maps of vascular plants (numbered 794-850, 51 bis and 83 bis, the two last being updates) covering Belgium, Luxemburg, northern France (roughly from Saint-Malo at the base of the Cotentin Peninsula east to Strasbourg), the southern half of the Netherlands, and a strip of north-western Germany. The selection of taxa is completely arbitrary, and the order, alphabetical by Latin species names. Almost one third of the volume consists of a double (!) cumulative index of the ten published map series.

In his introductory statement, Delvosalle announces the publication of a complete Atlas in the near future. That’s good news. It also means that the money used for printing these interim maps could have been saved. Rather than encumbering our book shelves where they are difficult to access and to use, these preliminary maps should have been made available on the internet for easy consultation and with continual updating. If you look for an example in which electronic publication is largely superior to traditional print, here it is. W.G.

  1. Kazimierz Browicz – Chorology of trees and shrubs in South-West Asia and adjacent regions. Phytogeographical analysis. – Bogucki & Institute of Dendrology, Polish Academy of Sciences, Poznao, 1997 (ISBN 83-86001-39-9). 18 pages, 6 maps, paper.

This is not just one further addition to Browicz’s monumental Chorology (see OPTIMA Newslett. 31: (14). 1997), but rather a synthesis of its published 575 (plus 25 unpublished) distribution maps. Browicz assigns the mapped species to six major phytogeographical elements on the basis of their predominant distribution (excluding 33 bi- or pluriregional species): Euro-Siberian s.str., Euxino-Hyrcanian (often included among the former by other authors), Mediterranean, Irano-Turanian, Sino-Japanese, and Afro-Sindian. He then presents grid maps of species diversity for the various elements.

The synthetic picture conveyed by these maps, which show very clearly the extension of the various phytogeographical domains in S.W. Asia, the southern Balkans, and N.E. Africa, gains in importance by the fact that they are based on concrete data not extrapolations or guesses. It is the first time to my knowledge that the phytogeography of the area has been appraised on such a solid and broad basis. My only (minor) regret is that the western end of the map relating to the Euro-Siberian element, essentially Greece, has been chopped off by some accident. W.G.

Index


Regional studies of flora and vegetation

  1. Matías Mayor López – Indicatores ecológicos y grupos socioecológicos en el Principado de Asturias (Sierra del Aramo). – Universidad de Oviedo, Oviedo, 1996 (ISBN 84-7468-921-x). 133 pages, 10 figures, flexible cover.

The Sierra del Aramo (1782 m) is a massif belonging to the Cordillera Cantábrica and situated S.W. of Oviedo. This booklet describes its vegetation in terms of "socio-ecological groups" (no formal syntaxa are recognised), lists its vascular flora, and characterises each taxon by its ecological indicator value: a 6-digit index in which each digit stands for an ecological parameter (light, temperature, climate continentality, moisture, soil acidity, and nitrogen content) of which the required or preferred degree is indicated within a range of values scaled from 1 to 5. The problem, it seems to me, is that it remains unclear how exactly these values have been assessed for each individual species; they cannot possibly have been just estimated!?

Curiously the indicator value list, which is arranged systematically, starts with one of the four "absolute average" species, scoring 33333: Equisetum arvense; the three other being Anemone nemorosa, Ornithogalum pyrenaicum, and Vicia sepium. Has anyone yet seen the four of them growing associated in nature? W.G.

  1. Josep Vigo i Bonada – El poblament vegetal de la Vall de Ribes. Les comunitats vegetals i el paisatge. Josep Vigo i Bonada & Ramon M. Masalles i Saumell – Mapa de vegetació 1:50 000. – Institut cartogràfic de Catalunya, Barcelona, 1996 (ISBN 84-393-3986-0). 468 pages, 15 figures, tables, separate folded colour map, paper in protective plastic pouch.

This is the second half of a general botanical study of a Spanish (sorry: Catalan) border area in the high Pyrenees, of which the first half, dealing with the flora, was published 13 years ago as volume 35 of the Acta botanica barcinonensia (see OPTIMA Newslett. 17-19: 57-58. 1985). That first portion also includes general chapter on physical environment and human geography, not repeated here.

The entire volume is thus devoted to a thorough study of the vegetation of the high mountain valley that takes its name from the village Ribes de Freser situated at its centre. There are descriptive and analytical chapters, and a section considering vegetation dynamics. The folded vegetation map (1 . 50,000) has smaller inserts showing the topography and geological substratum. The vegetation neatly reflects the duality of the mother rock, which consists of schist in the high frontier chain to the north but of limestone in the lower ridges delimiting the river basin to the south. On the two final pages, Vigo presents us with a (second) update to his earlier floristic inventory. W.G.

  1. Llorenç Sáez i Goñalons & Josep Vicens i Fandos – Plantes vasculars del quadrat UTM 31S DE80 Puig Major (Mallorca) [ORCA: Catàlegs floristics locals, 8]. – Institut d’Estudis Catalans, Secció de Ciències Biològiques, Barcelona, 1997 (ISBN 84-7283-367-4). 77 pages, 4 figures, paper.

This is but the eighth out of a total of 848 possible similar pamphlets, each treating of one mapping grid unit area, that would fit in this series of ORCA publications (see also item 58, above). Earlier publications of this series were previously reviewed in some detail (see OPTIMA Newslett. 25-29: (35). 1991; 31: (15-16). 1997). This one is the second study of an island territory in this series (after No. 4, on the Columbretes), and the first on the Balearic Islands, of which it encompasses the two highest peaks (Puig Major, 1447 m, and Puig de Maçanella, 1367 m), while reaching down almost to the shoreline in the north. The area, situated in the highly karstified limestone range of northern Mallorca, is notoriously rich in insular endemics, some very rare and local. Yet the total number of recorded taxa, 750, is just about average for a square of this size at middle altitudes. W.G.

Index


Applied botany

  1. Karl Hammer, Helmut Knüpffer, Gaetano Laghetti & Pietro Perrino – Seeds from the past. A catalogue of crop germplasm in southern Italy and Sicily. – Institut für Pflanzengenetik und Kulturpflanzenforschung, Gatersleben & Istituto del Germoplasma, Bari, 1992. [4] + ii + 173 pages, 2 maps, 2 tables, paper.

The interest of the well-known Gatersleben research institute of the former Academy of Sciences of the German Democratic Republic in the cultivated plants of southern Italy goes back to an early collecting expedition by R. Maly to Calabria and N.E. Sicily, in 1950. Since 1980, exploration has been intensified and widened to the whole of southern Italy (Campania, Basilicata, Apulia, Calabria) and Sicily, under a bilateral co-operation agreement between Gatersleben and the germplasm institute in Bari. To the 535 seed samples collected by Maly, mostly still kept at Gatersleben, 1622 samples collected between 1980 and 1988 have been added, preserved at Bari and duplicated elsewhere. Most of these samples concern major crops and their land-races, where genetic erosion has progressed catastrophically in the last few decades, but minor crops and potential wild progenitors of cultivated plants were also collected.

This book is not however an inventory of samples in seed-banks (which are mentioned only in statistical terms). It is essentially a catalogue of the cultivated plants of the area, including potential wild progenitors but excluding ornamentals. 541 taxa belonging to 522 different species are listed, each with its (cultivated) distribution, usage, local vernacular appellations, wild origin, and often notes on its history. There is a voluminous bibliography to document the sources of the data, and an impressive index to vernaculars, with almost 3000 entries. The catalogue is thus a convenient source work for a vast amount of information that is often neglected in floristic literature and thus difficult to access. It is also a vivid demonstration of the importance of southern Italy and Sicily as source areas for the gene-pools of our cultivated plants, with just over 200 among the discussed taxa being members of the indigenous flora. W.G.

  1. Bice Bellomaria & Clementina Berdini – Piante officinali in erboristeria. – Dipartimento di Botanica ed Ecologia, Università degli Studi, Camerino, 1995. 206 pages, 76 figures, paper.

Leafing through this booklet one starts wondering: is it the last offshoot of renaissance herbalist tradition or is it early testimony for a renewed fashion? I suspect the latter to be true, yet resemblance with a 16th Century herbal is obvious, especially if one contemplates the simple charm of the crude drawings of Paolo Ortolani that recalls, without matching them, the primitive woodcuts of old. It is hardly by accident that the cover is embellished by two coloured illustrations reproduced from Mattioli’s Discorsi, first published in 1555.

The selection of the officinal plants to be treated was avowedly based on actual public demand. Each of the 76 plant portraits is faced by an explanatory text by the authors, a university professor of pharmaceutical botany and a pharmacist specialising in plant drugs. There are some botanical details, including provenance and the scientific name. However, the stress is clearly on medicinal properties and the preparation of simples for the purpose of self-medication. Yet this is not the modern counterpart of one of those booklets popular in Italy two centuries ago, published anonymously as Farmcopea ad uso de’ poveri (Milano 1793): it does not primarily address the needful but those distrustful of the modern medical sciences, those in quest of the pristine sources of health. May it fulfil its purpose without causing harm. W.G.

Index


Conservation topics, red data books

  1. Olivia Delanoë, Bertrand de Montmollin & Louis Olivier – Flore des îles méditerranéennes 1. Stragtégie d’action. Conservation of Mediterranean island plants 1. Strategy for action. – International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources, Gland & Cambridge (U.K.), 1996 (ISBN 2-8317-0351-4). ix + 106 pages, black-and-white illustrations, paper.

As a follow-up to the international conference on the knowledge and conservation of the flora of Mediterranean islands, held in Corsica in October 1993 (See OPTIMA Newslett. 30: (57). 1996), a Mediterranean Islands Plant Specialist Group became established within the Species Survival Commission of IUCN. This group has commissioned an action plan and strategy for the safeguard of Mediterranean insular floras, now published as a professionally designed and tightly written, entirely bilingual (French and English) document.

There has been much ado about Mediterranean conservation lately, with little concrete action so far. That botany should raise its head and claim to be heard is a timely move indeed – and one may be rightly pleased at the way in which it is done. Not only did the authors manage to provide their text with an impressively saleable make-up, they did also put their finger on the really weak spots. They are obviously trained, not only in P.R. techniques but in botany as well, so they know where the real problems lie. Well aware of the dreadful deficit of knowledge that hampers any rational approach to conservation problems, in the Mediterranean as elsewhere on the globe, they do not shy back from asking support for research. That they link this request with other agenda that are less unfamiliar to politicians and funding agencies is a clever move, and a fully justified one.

Island floras (and faunas) are known to be particularly vulnerable. They are the result of evolution under isolation, in small natural laboratories so-to-say, and are also the matrix in which old relict species could survive, screened off from the harsh and merciless competition that prevails in large mainland areas. Man has torn down the screen; man disrupts the delicate balance in which insular communities could develop. Man, therefore, has a heavy responsibility in trying to understand what he is menacing, and to save as much as possible of it before it is too late. W.G.

  1. Helios Sainz Ollero, Fátima Franco Múgica & Julio Arias Torcal – Estrategias para la conservación de la flora amenazada de Aragón. – Consejo de Protección de la Naturaleza de Aragón, Zaragoza, 1996 (ISBN 84-920441-2-8). 221 pages, colour maps and photographs, hard cover.

The greater part of this luxurious volume is devoted to the detailed presentation of case histories of 16 phanerogamic taxa, all considered to be threatened to various degrees. About half of them are endemic to Aragón (defined to comprise the three Spanish provinces of Huesca, Zaragoza, and Teruel), only three (Cypripedium calceolus, Halopeplis amplexicaulis, Krascheninnikowia ceratoides) having a wide extra-Iberian distribution. For two taxa considered to be under immediate threat of extinction, Borderea chouardii and Vella pseudocytisus subsp. paui, detailed action plans for their conservation have been prepared. Three dozen additional threatened species, including a few bryophytes, are briefly mentioned.

The book is superbly printed on heavy white satin paper, and most of the species dealt with in detail are shown in full-page colour photographs. Distribution and locality details are given by means of maps at various scales, including large-scale topographical maps. The information assembled includes herbarium and literature data but also, and most prominently, the results of new field studies. For all 16 taxa together, there were known documented occurrences in 101 squares of 1 km2; field work has now extended the known ranges to 166 additional such squares. Yet, further studies in the field of the most threatened populations are – rightly as I believe – listed among the most urgent priority measures envisaged for their safeguard. Let us hope that the authors will, by their work, convince the political leaders and the general public of the pressing need for action. W.G.

  1. Gérard Arnal – Les plantes protégées d’Ile-de-France. – Collection Parthénope, Paris, 1996 (ISBN 2-9510379-0-2). 349 pages, colour maps and photographs, laminated cover.

The region of Ile-de-France, or Paris basin, comprises the French departments of Essonne, Hauts-de-Seine, Seine, Seine-et-Marne, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne, and Val-d’Oise, and is certainly the most heavily urbanised area of France. Yet it still has a diverse flora and vegetation in many of its parts. Since 1991 there is a regional list granting legal protection to 167 higher plant taxa, to which 35 may be added that are protected by law on a national level. To these 202 vascular plants the present book is devoted.

There are 13 main chapters, each dealing with one major habitat type: water (chapter 1), various types of wetland (2-4), grassland and heath (5-8), rocks, walls and screes (9), and woodland (10-13). Colour illustrations abound, with habitat pictures heading the chapters, after which each protected species is shown on one or two photographs. There is of course explanatory text, which concentrates on the past and present occurrence of each plant in the Paris region – an aspect further illustrated by a distribution map in which pre-1980 records are set off against the confirmations of occurrence within the last 15 years (in red). Sadly, no less than 35 among the protected taxa have not been recently observed at all and may have become extinct in the region.

This is a beautiful book, and a useful one; one of those one is pleased to possess and show around as a good example of what skill and devotion, combined with modern technique, can achieve. W.G.

  1. Fabio Conti, Aurelio Manzi & Franco Pedrotti – Liste rosse regionali delle piante d’Italia. – Dipartimento di Botanica ed Ecologia, Università degli Studi, Camerino, 1997. 138 pages, drawing, graphs, paper.

A complement and update to the recently published Italian Plant Red Data Book (see OPTIMA Newslett. 30: (42-43). 1996), this new publication essentially consists of a huge tabular overview, listing 3179 vascular plant taxa (species, subspecies and a few varieties) considered to be threatened in one or more of the 20 regions of Italy. For each such taxon and region, the appropriate red data category is indicated, updated to conform to the definition as recently revised by the IUCN. This gigantic exercise has, as a corollary, led to a complete overhaul of the national red list for Italy, which now comprises 1011 vascular plant taxa, more than twice the number (458) treated five years before in the Red Data Book! Sadly, 6 Italian endemics must now be considered extinct (whereas no such extinction had yet been documented in 1992): Allium permixtum, Anthemis abrotanifolia, Carduus rugulosus, Kleinia mandraliscae, Limonium catanense, and Salvia ceratophylloides. The five first had all been described from Sicily and the last, from Calabria; one is left wondering what the causes and consequences of such a blatant geographical imbalance might well be. W.G.

Index


Gardens

  1. Sandro Scalia – Ispirandosi all’Orto botanico. Fotografie dal 1870 al 1996. – Ariete, Palermo, 1997. 119 pages, colour and black-and-white photographs, paper. Price: Lit. 30,000.

"Getting inspired at the botanical garden" was the title of a jubilee exhibit commemorating, among several other events, the Palermo Botanical Garden’s bicentenary. The exhibition consisted of various sections illustrating the links between the garden and its human environment, its influence on history, music, art, and photography. The book at hand is not a guide to the exhibit, not even to its photography section, but a loose assemblage of the impressions that the latter conveyed. Historical photographs alternate with examples of modern artistic photography by several of the leading artists in the field (short biographical sketches of them are given at the end). Two introductory texts, by Bruno Caruso and Marcello Faletra (the latter himself a photographer) set the scene. Otherwise this is a sheer picture book, with a citation from Goethe’s Palermo diary to serve as its motto (poor Goethe, who happened to be a few years early with his visit, just missing out the Garden’s foundation!). W.G.

Index


Bibliography and documentation

  1. Heinz Kalheber – Index ad iconographiam florae europaeae. Heft. 3: Dicotyledones (Convolvulaceae-Labiatae). [Courier Forschungsinstitut Senckenberg, 177]. – Senckenbergische Naturforschende Gesellschaft, Frankfurt a.M., 1994 (ISBN 3-929907-18-6). 187 + 14 pages, paper bound with loose insert. Price: DM 48.

The index to published illustrations of European plants follows Med-Checklist closely in its publication pattern, which is why, not only does its 3rd volume coincide in coverage with vol. 3 of Med-Checklist but, as for that work, it is not the third but in effect the second to be published. It is fairly safe to predict that (since vol. 2 of Med-Checklist, to comprise the Compositae, is still in the early embryonic stage) the next volume of the index to be published will be vol. 4.

The first issue of this Index has been revised rather fully (in OPTIMA Newslett. 30: (52-53). 1996), and what I wrote then is equally valid for the present volume. The families are arranged alphabetically so that the contents can be inferred from the title. One detail I forgot to mention last time: the explanatory material in the introduction is fully bilingual (German and English) so that the Index can be used by the non-German-speaking as well. The loose insert provides the key to the extremely condensed and otherwise unintelligible text references, and I found it very practical indeed to be able to use both side by side.

This is one of those tools that every working plant taxonomist in the Old World should have ready at hand, and the moderate price can be no obstacle for this to happen. But for inadequate marketing by the publisher, this would deservedly be a botanical best-seller. W.G.

Index


Biography and historical subjects

  1. Jesús Izco & Olga Álvarez Villaverde – P. A. Pourret. Un botánico francés canónigo en Ourense y Santiago. – Universidade, Santiago de Compostela, 1996 (ISBN 84-8121-475-2). 86 pages, 10 figures and graphs, paper.

While much has been written on the life of Abbé Pourret, the famous clergyman and botanist from Narbonne who was one of the fathers of Pyrenean botany, his life and work are nevertheless still incompletely known. Timbal-Lagrave’s 1875 classical biography of Pourret was written with the twofold bias of a fellow botanist and Frenchman. The present booklet complements and partly rectifies the previously known data on the last part of Pourret’s life, following his brief stay in Madrid where he had been appointed honorary deputy director of the botanical garden by Ortega to be dismissed soon after by Cavanilles his successor. Based on unpublished documents in the clerical archives of Orense and Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, the authors retrace Pourret’s days in those two cities, where he dwelt, respectively, from 1799 to 1809 and from 1815 until his death in 1818. They made a special enquiry has been made into the mysterious years of his hide, during the Napoleonic wars and subsequent to the looting of his house in Orense by the French troops (and not by the local populace, as Timbal had claimed). As a result, it emerges that the mysterious "Vieiro" often cited for that period as Pourret’s residence is in fact an error for El Vierzo in the Province of León, and that the plants he collected in "S. P. de Mtes:", transposed by Willkomm & Lange to San Pablo de Montes in the Toledo Province, originated in fact from around the Benedictine abbey of San Pedro de Montes in the Vierzo area. W.G.

  1. Enrico Baldini – L’atlante citrografico di Giorgio Gallesio. [I Georgofili, 172 (ser. 7, 43), Supplemento]. – Accademia dei Georgofili, Firenze, 1996. 32 pages, 31 extra plates in colour, paper.

Those fortunate enough to be granted access to the private archives of the old families of Italian nobility are likely to make phenomenal discoveries. Did the descendants and heirs of Count Giorgio Gallesio, the well known pomologist, ever fancy what their attics hold? In his first published work, the Traité du Citrus of 1811, Gallesio had announced an Atlas of 30 plates, originally due to be intercalated among the text but which, having experienced how difficult, time-consuming and expensive the operation would be, he now hoped to publish in due course at his leisure. He never managed to do so – but the preparatory work had in good part been completed. The famous French artists Poiteau and Turpin, whom he had originally commissioned for the job, sent him to Florence what they had done by 1817, and there the work was continued by local painters, Del Pino in particular, until about 1834. What is left today, apart from various preparatory sketches (also partly reproduced here), are 31 beautiful paintings on vellum of various species and varieties of Citrus, including 16 by Poiteau and one by Turpin, which are here published for the first time, at about half their original size. There is also an updated version of Gallesio’s curious (long pre-Darwinian!) evolutionary tree, first published in the Traité of 1811, showing the four recognised Citrus species and correlated cultivars in their presumed natural relationship. Baldini has prepared careful explanatory texts for each of the plates, plus a historical introduction, to serve as a frame for this new jewel of botanical artistry and history of pomology. W.G.

  1. Franco Pedrotti – Mariano Gajani e l’Orto botanico di Camerino. [L’uomo e l’ambiente, 17]. – Dipartimento di Botanica ed Ecologia, Università degli Studi, Camerino, 1995. 99 pages, 4 figures, flexible cover.

  1. Lucia Cardona – L’epistolario di Vincenzo Ottaviani, fondatore dell’Orto botanico di Camerino. [L’uomo e l’ambiente, 20]. – Dipartimento di Botanica ed Ecologia, Università degli Studi, Camerino, 1996. 17 + (12) + [2] pages, 1 extra plate, flexible cover.

A few years ago a special symposium had been devoted to the Camerino Botanical Garden, founded in 1828. Its proceedings (see OPTIMA Newslett. 30: (58). 1996) were published in 1989 in the same series as the two present items, which by their subject are closely connected with it and with each other, since they are devoted to the two first prefects of the Garden. Neither of those two has achieved major fame in the domain of botany, a field in which both were knowledgeable, since their botanical writings were either few or remained largely unpublished.

Vincenzo Ottaviani (1790-1861), upon whose forceful initiative the Camerino Garden was founded, was a correspondent and friend of Bertoloni. He was an assiduous explorer of various areas of central Italy, where he collected many plants mentioned in Bertoloni’s Flora italica, now to be found in the herbarium at Bologna. His main (unpublished) work was a treaty on the edible fungi of the Vatican State whose manuscript, together with no less than 620 mycological plates, is still kept at Bologna. Recently, letters and draft manuscripts of Ottaviani came to light in the state archives at Urbino, and Ms Cardona, librarian at the botany department of Camerino University, has undertaken to transcribe and publish a selection of these texts: several letters and documents relating to the Camerino period of Ottaviani (1826-1841), where he was professor of chemistry and botany at the medical faculty, as well as to the circumstances of his subsequent move to Urbino and to his later botanical activities. Also reproduced are manuscripts perhaps intended for publication: a supplement to a catalogue of woody plants of Camerino and the Marche, of which the catalogue itself has apparently not survived, and various texts on medicinal plants. A short biographical sketch, absent from the publication proper, is included in the preface by Franco Pedrotti.

Mariano Gajani (1810-1878) would certainly not have been Ottaviani’s own choice as his successor, since the latter qualified him as "an impudent arrogant" in writing to a friend. He was prefect of the Camerino Garden, where he also held the chair of what we would now call pharmaceutical botany, from 1841 until 1850, when he was expelled from the University as a result of the Italian Restoration and of his having been politically committed on the wrong side. He was to end his days in Ancona, where he published a now exceedingly rare journal, Rivista farmaceutica, between 1857 and 1867, in eight volumes (of which vol. 6 presumably never appeared). The present booklet includes a bibliographical analysis of this journal, based on the few surviving copies, and also a facsimile reprint of the single genuinely botanical publication by Gajani, a 12-page inventory of the Camerino Garden dated 1849, which is the first surviving list of that Garden’s holdings (an index of 1835, by Ottaviani, is mentioned in the literature, but no copy could be traced). It also brings what must be considered the first biography of Gajani ever published. W.G.

Index


Reprints

  1. Paolo Boccone – Museo di piante rare della Sicilia, Malta, Corsica, Italia, Piemonte, e Germania, dedicato ad alcuni nobili patritii veneti protettori della botanica, e delle buone lettere, con l’Appendix ad libros de plantis andreae Caesalpini, e varie osservazioni curiose. – Facsimile reprint: Edizioni Grifo, Palermo, 1996. [Original publication: Giovanni Battista Zuccato, Venezia, 1697]. xv [11] + 196 pages, [1] + 131 extra plates of drawings, cloth with gilt imprint.

Paolo Boccone, or Silvio as he was renamed when vowing himself a monk of the Cistercian order, is claimed by Palermo botanists as one of their own since he was born in their city, but is in fact a personality of European rank. Naturalist and physician of great erudition, traveller in many countries from Sicily and Malta to England and Poland, Boccone was a botanist at heart and has profoundly influenced botanical science through his writings, his correspondence, and his pupils. His greatest and most famous work, here reprinted, was among those assiduously used by Linnaeus and many other botanists as one of the early sources of knowledge on Mediterranean plants.

The book itself has a complex structure and is not easy reading, not only because of its archaic Italian language and convoluted style. The easiest of its problems is a pagination anomaly, which has misled Christiane Garnero Morena and Pietro Mazzola, the authors of an otherwise most useful and informative introductory chapter on Boccone’s personality and writings, to give the actual number of text pages as 186 only. In fact they are 196 indeed, as pagination has it, only that pages 113-128 are mis-numbered 123-138 (or, if you prefer, page numbers 113-122 are lacking while 129-138 occur twice). The text consists of an apparently haphazard mixture of twelve numbered "decades" (each dedicated to a prominent "protector" of the arts and sciences and describing a variable number – but never 10 – of different plants, or rarely drugs), eleven "observations" (mostly in the form of letters), various individual unnumbered letters to or by Boccone, and some larger inserts such as 18 medical "propositions" by David Abercrombie and the "appendix" to Cesalpino mentioned in the subtitle. There is an index to plants and persons mentioned in the text, but none to the plates, nor any cross-reference from the text to the figures. Also, I have been quite unable to figure out a rationale or red thread of any kind as to how the book was supposed to be organised. Just an example: in the midst of the index, between the letters S and T, there is an additional note on the ginseng root linking on to another one, 20 pages ahead.

Among the most notable features of the book, those that were most influential in scientific terms, are its illustrations. Apart from the frontispiece showing Saint Rosalie and a shoot of Ballota hispanica above a plan of the city of Palermo, and a portrait of Boccone himself at age 64, there are 132 copper engravings by the author, showing about 375 different plant species: one unnumbered plate facing page 6 (lacking in many of the known copies of the book) and 131 numbered ones at the end. Just have a go at them and test yourself: how many of the plants can you identify offhand? W.G.

  1. Antonino Borzí – Studi algologici. Saggio di ricerche sulla biologia delle alghe (fascicoli i e ii – tavole i-xxxi). – Facsimile reprint: Edizioni Naturama, Palermo, 1996. [Original publication: Gaetano Capra, Messina, 1883; Alberto Reber, Palermo, 1895.] vii + vi + 1-117 + [4] + 119-379 pages, 9 + 22 extra plates of drawings, hard cover with gilt imprint.

The last published of the Palermo reprints of classical botanical texts is, for once, not devoted to an export from but an import to Palermo. Antonino Borzì (1852-1921) was born in the Messina Province and first became professor at Messina University before succeeding Todaro on the chair of botany at Palermo University and as director of the Palermo Botanical Garden, in 1892. The work now reprinted was written entirely, and for its first half printed, during Borzì’s Messina period.

Borzì was one of the great old Sicilian botanists who achieved European fame. His interests ranged from phanerogams (trees in particular) to fungi and algae, especially cyanobacteria, and were by no means confined to classical taxonomy in which he however also excelled. He was not only a brilliant scientist but an efficient organiser, who conceived and realised the idea of transforming the Palermo Garden into a venue for the acclimatisation of tropical plants, under the heading "Giardino coloniale".

The volume chosen for being reprinted to commemorate Borzì illustrates his work on the eukaryotic algae. When reading it, one immediately perceives where Borzì’s importance in this field lies: he was a pioneer in culturing the organisms he was to study, so that he could observe their different stages and often very different looking generations throughout their life cycle. The studies here described and illustrated involve 19 different species of "green" algae, representing as many genera – mostly Chlorophyceae but in a few cases (the first five of the second half) today placed in the Xanthophyceae. No less than 11 of these genera were Borzì’s own, and 7 were first described and named in this very publication. The fact that all these eleven generic names of his are, without exception, still in current use today well illustrates Borzì’s qualities of keen observer and perspicacious taxonomist. W.G.

Index


Symposium proceedings

  1. Benito Valdés, Vernon H. Heywood, Francesco M. Raimondo & Daniel Zohary (ed.). – Proceedings of the Workshops on "Conservation of the Wild Relatives of European Cultivated Plants". Faro (Portugal), 8-11 November 1992, Neuchâtel (Switzerland), 14-17 October 1993, Gibilmanna-Palermo (Italy), 21-27 September 1994. [Bocconea, 7]. – Herbarium Mediterraneum Panormitanum, Palermo, 1997 (ISBN 88-7915-007-3). 479 Pages, black-and-white illustrations, paper.

As the subtitle tells, this is the proceedings volume not for one but for a series of three workshops, or small symposia, held at yearly intervals on one and the same topic and with a similar organisational frame. They have their common root in the initiative of one person: Daniel Zohary, who fathered the idea of the precursory 1989 Strasbourg Colloquy on the "Conservation of wild progenitors of cultivated plants" that in turn triggered the set-up, by the Council of Europe, of the "Group of specialists on biodiversity and biosubsistence", responsible for the collaborative programme of which these workshops were the backbone. Funding ran out before the originally planned workshop series could be completed, but then, the hospitality of Palermo botanists and the liberality of their sponsors made up for that deficiency.

The volume includes most of the papers presented at the three workshops, 46 in all, integrating them in a novel and coherent context. Not only has the original order of presentation been abandoned: not even the workshop or year in which each paper was presented is recorded (and there are no lists of participants to assist in reconstructing it). This confers a new quality to the whole, which is decidedly more than the sum of its individual parts – due among other things to the fact that the introduction and conclusions framing the core of the proceedings, with the papers proper, are both authored by Vernon Heywood who, as on previous occasions, shows himself a master of informative synthesis.

The topics presented are too varied to permit their full enumeration. Genera discussed represented vegetables (Brassica), cereals (Triticum, Avena), pasture grasses (Dactylis), fruit (Prunus, Olea) and timber trees (Fagus, Abies, Populus). Aspects considered are, among others, genetics, reproductive biology, and other types of study, mostly of populations, as well as the various in-situ and ex-situ conservation techniques, including sampling, monitoring as well as legal options. The overall picture is one of great complexity and urgency of the problems outlined and, to address them, considerable deficits of know-how, resources, and concerted action. W.G.

Index


New periodicals

  1. Parlatorea. Rivista aperiodica del Laboratorio di Fitogeografia, Dipartimento di Biologia vegetale dell’Università di FirenzeVol. 1 (1996), 72 pages, 1 couloured, folded map in pouch, paper.

The publication of a new scientific journal in our domain is always a momentous event. Expectations are enhanced by the fact that the journal’s name commemorates one of the most prominent Italian botanists ever, Filippo Parlatore: author or a Flora of Italy, of numerous monographic and floristic papers as well as, albeit posthumously, an early study on Italian plant geography; founding father and first manager of what was and still is Italy’s internationally renowned national journal of botanical sciences, the Giornale botanico italiano. The choice of name, definitely, implies a commitment to the highest scientific and editorial standards. So does the fact that it is the botanical institute long directed by Parlatore himself that is publishing the review.

The purpose and coverage of the journal is made explicit in its first Editorial: it shall publish full-scale monographic works, including sizeable ones, in the domains of plant taxonomy and geobotany. It intends to avoid lengthy publication delays and high costs by being published at irregular intervals, printed from electronically produced copy [nothing original nowadays, I should say] and by the application of "agile editorial procedures" – whatever this may mean. And then the excellent news for the user: at least for the launching period, the journal is being made available free or by exchange to all interested persons and institutions.

As a first issue designed to launch a new journal, the present "volume" is, frankly, both puzzling and disappointing. It is amazingly unilateral in its contents, with four papers all dealing with the vegetation of defined areas in Sardinia, all with one and the same person as their sole or senior author, who is in the same time Director, Chief Editor and Advisory Board member of the journal. A one-man show if there ever was one! The advisory board is a group of five, with no foreigner included and a majority of members (3) from the publishing institute. I may be wrong, but the whole context suggests that the journal is little more than the factual expression of dissent of its Director with the editorial policy of the (well established and internationally renowned) journal Webbia, published next door in the same building. If so, and unless the next volumes are substantially different from No. 1, I am rather sorry for Parlatore. W.G.

  1. Bulletin of the Museum of Natural History of the University of Florence. – No. 1 (1997), 4 pages, no cover.

Don’t be cheated by the title: this is not a journal but an unpretentious Newsletter, mainly for in-house use (avowedly so, despite the fact of being written entirely in English!) but also distributed to other museums. It is to be published four times per year, and is also being placed on the internet under the Museum’s homepage (http://www.unifi.it/unifi/msn/), where however I looked for it in vain. If you are interested in special exhibitions or collection news, or need the direct phone dial of a staff members or a departmental e-mail address, this is where you may look them up. W.G.

  1. The Mediterranean garden. – The Mediterranean Garden Society, P.O. Box 14, GR-19002 Peania, Greece (ISSN 1106-5826). No. 1 (1995), iv + 58 pages; No. 2 (1995), iv + 58 pages; No. 3 (1995-1996), iv + 58 pages; No. 4 (1996), iv + 58 pages; No. 5 (1996), iv + 58 pages; No. 6 (1996), iv + 58 pages; No. 7 (1996-1997), iv + 74 pages; paper. Price £St 4 per No.

The Mediterranean Garden Society is a new-born child, founded at the beginning of 1995 with Niki Gouladris and William Stearn kindly smiling down on the cradle in their assumed role of god-parents. It was one of those timely initiatives destined for immediate success, spreading forcefully into an empty ecological niche. Within two years from its founding date, and without much publicity and ado, it has won over 500 members and keeps growing exponentially. It provides a new home for all those interested in gardening under a Mediterranean climate, whether as residents or owners of a part-time or holiday home. It promotes timely ideas such as irrigation-free gardening under summer drought and the use of local plants in Mediterranean gardens; but it is equally interested in all sorts of problems faced by the Mediterranean garden fan, from landscaping to pest control and exotic plants.

The Society’s journal, The Mediterranean garden, is an admirably well edited quarterly published in Greece, where the Society was founded and has its permanent Secretariat on a domain owned by the Goulandris Natural History Museum and situated at the eastern foot of Mt Imittos in Attica. Caroline Harbouri in Kifisia is the journal’s editor and deserves unrestricted compliments for the varied and interesting contents as well as for the flawless, elegant English of all contributions, which include commissioned features as well as book reviews and member correspondence. The Society’s first President, Sally Razelou, is also Greek, but the President-elect, Heidi Gildemeister, author of a most successful book on Mediterranean gardening (also translated into Spanish and German), resides on the Balearic Islands. It is hoped that OPTIMA can establish good and mutually beneficial contacts with the Mediterranean Garden Society, with which it has many interests in common while being largely complementary in scope. W.G.

  1. MEDUSA Newsletter. – Mediterranean Agronomic Institute at Chania, P.O. Box 85, GR-73100 Hania, Greece. Issue 1 (1997), 28 pages, no cover.

When leafing through this palatably looking first Newsletter issue, the reader may wonder what MEDUSA actually stands for. Well, perhaps everyone is supposed to know. Anyhow, the information to be found on this new network project in the Newsletter itself is more than scanty. Let me therefore quote from a separately distributed information leaflet, to show how highly relevant MEDUSA is likely to become for OPTIMA and its members.

"A network on the ‘Identification, Conservation and Use of Wild Plants in the Mediterranean Region’ called MEDUSA, was formally established during the workshop on ‘Identification of wild food and non-food plants of the Mediterranean Region’ held on 28-29 June 1996 at the Mediterranean Agronomic Institute of Chania (MAICh).

"The eventual aim of the network is to propose methods for the economic and social development of rural areas of the Mediterranean Region, using ecologically-based management systems that will ensure the sustainable use and conservation of plant resources of the area... The particular goal of the Network is the exploration of possibilities for the sustainable utilisation of such resources as alternative crops for the diversification of agricultural production and improved product quality.

"The objectives of the Network are:

  • "The identification of native and naturalised plants of the Mediterranean Region, used as: [follow 13 usage categories, from food via bee plants and poisons to gene sources].
  • "The creation of an Interactive Regional Information System [IRIS] that will include: scientific plant name and authority, vernacular names, plant description, chemical data, distribution, habitat description, uses, conservation status, ... including references to literature sources.
  • "Preliminary evaluation of the conservation status and potential utilisation of these plants in agriculture as alternative minor crops.

"The Network includes members who are Representatives of International Organisations (CIHEAM-MAICh, IUCN, IUBS, ICMAP, FAO, IPGRI-WANA, LEAD) and form the Steering Committee, and representatives of Institutions from countries of the Mediterranean Basin (initially Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Egypt, Turkey, Greece, Italy, France, Spain and Portugal)..."

No doubt some of the points yet unclear in the structure and mandate of MEDUSA have been left purposely vague. In particular, while under rigorous logic the equation "wild food and non-food plants = wild plants" is evidently true, the restriction of the scope of MEDUSA to plants belonging to a defined while all-embracing set of use categories implies that something different than "all wild plants" is being meant. Or is it the (sustainable) surmise that each and every wild plant is in its way useful to Mankind? If so, MEDUSA-IRIS will be a gigantic undertaking indeed!

Back to the newsletter from where we started, which is skilfully edited by MEDUSA chairman and OPTIMA Council member Vernon Heywood. It includes a number of columns such as: activity reports, country news, country presentations, news from organisations, book reviews, announcements of forthcoming and reports of recently held meetings. Since as I initially stated MEDUSA and OPTIMA are closely related by their interests, while complementary in their immediate purpose, it is not surprising to see an account of our Organisation included. Many other relevant items of information can be found on almost every page, to name but reports of the IUCN Mediterranean Island Group and on the Flora iberica project (see Nos 7 and 66, above). The MEDUSA initiative, of which funding is currently secured until the end of 1997, is important and should go on. Let us wish it every possible success. W.G.

[author: Werner Greuter]

Please send all items for review directly to the author of this column:
Prof. Dr. Werner GREUTER,
Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin-Dahlem
Freie Universität Berlin
Königin-Luise-Straße 6-8
D-14191 Berlin, Germany.
Phone: (+4930) 838-50132 or 8316010, Fax: (+4930) 838-50218
E-mail: wg@zedat.fu-berlin.de.

 

 

 

 


Page editors. This page last updated 23 November , 2011.



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