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BEN # 175
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No. 175 November 3, 1997
aceska@freenet.victoria.bc.ca Victoria, B.C.
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Dr. A. Ceska, P.O.Box 8546, Victoria, B.C. Canada V8W 3S2
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A LOST "LIVING FOSSIL" REDISCOVERED IN MADAGASCAR
From: http://www.mobot.org/MOBOT/madagascar/takhweb.html
[Abstract. The original, illustrated article was written
by George E. Schatz, Porter P. Lowry II, & Annick
Ramisamihantanirina, Missouri Botanical Garden]
Takhtajania perrieri (Winteraceae) rediscovered in Madagascar
Spectacular finds of early Cretaceous fossil flowers during the
past decade have fueled a resurgence of research on the origin
of flowering plants. Now, scientists will once again have a
"living fossil" to study and place in the context of other
primitive angiosperms. Takhtajania perrieri (Capuron) J.-F.
Leroy & Baranova, the only extant representative of the family
Winteraceae occurring in the Africa/Madagascar region, has been
rediscovered in northeastern Madagascar 85 years after its
original finding.
At the suggestion of Peter H. Raven, beginning in 1974 with the
late Alwyn Gentry, Missouri Botanical Garden botanists and their
Malagasy colleagues have searched in vain at the Manongarivo
Special Reserve in northwestern Madagascar where French botanist
Henri Perrier de la Bathie had collected the only specimen in
1909. Then in 1994, the Malagasy plant collector Fanja Rasoavim-
bahoaka, carrying out botanical inventory as part of a joint
program between the Missouri Botanical Garden (MBG) and the
World Wide Fund for Nature, collected a flowering tree in the
Anjahanaribe-Sud Special Reserve southwest of Andapa. The
specimens were identified as Takhtajania in late May of this
year by MBG botanist George E. Schatz. The new locality is 150
km to the southeast of the original collection. In June, a team
of MBG Malagasy staff botanists relocated the site of the 1994
collection, and have subsequently begun to accrue material for
the numerous specialized studies to be conducted in the coming
months by scientists throughout the world. Preliminary field
surveys indicate a large and thriving population.
Takhtajania perrieri was originally described in 1963 by the
French forest botanist Rene Capuron in the genus Bubbia, known
from Australia, New Caledonia and the Lord Howe Islands. On the
basis of several anomalous features unique within Winteraceae
(such as a putative paracarpous bicarpellate gynoecium and
anomocytic stomata), Jean-Francois Leroy and Margarita Baranova
in 1978 created a new genus and subfamily to accommodate the
species, naming it in honor of the Russian [actually Armenian -
AC] plant systematist Armen Takhtajan.
In St. Louis in June, while celebrating his 87th birthday and
the publication of his latest synthesis on the classification of
flowering plants, Dr. Takhtajan was presented with a specimen of
Takhtajania for the Komarov Botanical Institute in St.
Petersburg. Both he and the entire international botanical
community anxiously await the forthcoming studies that this
wonderful rediscovery will engender.
[See also: http://38.214.184.12/sn_arc97/8_2_97/fob1.htm ]
FAMILY WINTERACEAE
From: Woodland, D.W. 1997. Contemporary plant systematics.
Second edition, p. 139. [See NEW BOOKS below.]
The family Winteraceae consists of 9 genera and 100 species
distributed in the montane subtropics and tropics of Mexico,
Central and South America, most diverse in southeastern
Australasia, and absent from Africa, except Madagascar. The
largest genera are Tasmania (40 species) and Bubbia (30
species).
Economically the groups is of very little value, except Drimys
winteri, winter's bark from South America, which is used as a
tonic locally.
Along with the Magnoliaceae, the Winteraceae is considered by
most modern classifications to be one of the oldest known
flowering plant families. Pollen remains attributed to the
Winteraceae come from the Upper Cretaceous deposits, with other
plant parts from Oligocene formations.
NEW BOOKS: CONTEMPORARY PLANT SYSTEMATICS, SECOND EDITION
Woodland, D.W. 1997. Contemporary plant sytematics. Second
edition. Andrews University Press, Berrien Springs, Michigan.
619 p. ISBN 1-883925-14-2 [soft cover]. Enclosed is a compact
disk with "CD-ROM Photo-atlas of vascular plants" (with 3000
photographs of vascular plants). Price: US$59.95
Ordering information: Andrews University Press, Berrien
Springs, MI 49104-1700. Credit cards accepted. Phone: 616-
471-6915, or 800-467-6369 (restricted to individual orders
paying with a VISA or MasterCard).
E-mail: aupress@andrews.edu
The book was written as a text book for universities and col-
leges, and it covers all major vascular plant families of the
world. Although it is most relevant to temperate flora, it is
not restricted to the temperate region. The first part of the
book consists of introductory chapters on systematics, nomencla-
ture, botanical literature, herbarium techniques, etc. The main
core of the book (Chapters 6 to 10) covers about 260 families of
vascular plants of the world. The final chapters (Chapters 11 to
15) cover the history of botanical classification, the origin of
vascular plants, methods of plant systematics, problems of en-
dangered species, and the role of botanical gardens.
The book serves well both as a textbook and as a botanical
reference. It is richly illustrated with line drawings, black-
and-white photographs, and summary diagrams. Enclosed with the
book is a compact disk with about 3000 colour photographs of
vascular plants from 264 plant families. (Family Winteraceae -
see above - is represented by 4 pictures on the compact disk.)
The book is well written, and it is extremely user-friendly. The
compact disk, on the other hand, is rather difficult to use. The
authors of the CD-ROM Photo-Atlas recommend Windows 95 and
Quicktime 1.1 or 2.1 to view the files. My computer-literate
friend discovered that you can use a web browser (such as
Netscape or Microsoft Internet Explorer) and open the Photo-
Atlas files as local files. I found browsing through the pic-
tures exciting. Imagine getting 3000 of these selected slides
with your book! However, the selection of pictures is uneven in
certain groups (majority of Carex pictures refer to the section
Pseudocypereae), and you can find occasional mistakes ("Juncus
sp." is in fact Luzula subgen. Pterodes, perhaps L. acuminata).
Overall, the quality of the CD-ROM Photo-Atlas is very good.
The book gives a clear, enjoyable introduction to the taxonomy
of vascular plants and it is an excellent textbook of systematic
botany for college and university courses.
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