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BEN # 235
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No. 235 November 13, 1999
aceska@victoria.tc.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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DISCUSSION ON RELEVANCE OF SPECIMEN CITATIONS
From: Snow, N. & P.L. Keating. 1999. Relevance of specimen
citations to conservation. Conservation biology 13: 943-94.
In their recent paper, Snow and Keating revisit the topic of
specimen citation in systematic studies. Their concern stems
from the significant decrease in comprehensiveness (total number
of citations) and level of detail in citations by a few import-
ant botanical journals. They urge botanists and journal editors
to increase both the comprehensiveness and detail in specimen
citation lists.
The authors cite examples of systematic monographs where the
information about specimens was reduced to mere dots on dis-
tribution maps or to the citation of collectors and collections
numbers without any other location data.
"Some journal editors apparently have forgotten that specimen
citations in monographs constitute the primary public source of
all new locality information, and these data are often of impor-
tant consideration in conservation biology. Editorial policies
that allow generous (but not unlimited) specimen citations would
best serve the information needs of biologists at large. We hope
that systematists will reconsider the value of detailed speci-
mens-cited lists, particularly in the context of conservation
biology, and ask journal editors to amend policies that severely
limit the citation of specimens."
[P.S. I was delighted to see full citations of specimens in Dr.
J. Phipps' recent papers on Crataegus in the Canadian Journal of
Botany and in Sida. The Canadian Journal of Botany, Sida, and
Dr. Phipps should be commended for their excellent work. - AC]
BRITISH COLUMBIA NATURE CLASSIC BACK IN PRINT
From: Dr. Rhoda M. Love <rglove@oregon.uoregon.edu>
Stanwell-Fletcher, Theodora C. 1999. Driftwood Valley: a woman
naturalist in the northern wilderness. Northwest Reprints.
Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, OR. 352 p. ISBN 0-
87071-524-0 [softcover] Price: US$17.95.
For direct orders phone 1-800-426-3797 in U.S. (through the
OSU Press distributor, the University of Arizona Press), and
1-800-663-5714 in Canada (UBC Press, the Canadian distribu-
tor). For further information, please contact the OSU Press
at 503-282- 9801 or e-mail tbooth@teleport.com
Dr. Theodora C. Stanwell-Fletcher's classic book, Driftwood
Valley, first published in 1946, is back in print in time for
the holidays. Oregon State University Press in Corvallis has
just brought out a new edition which contains plant and animal
lists, animal sketches, photos of the author and her husband,
their dogs and their Indian neighbors, an introduction by Wen-
dell Berry, a new biographical sketch of the author by Rhoda
Love and a bibliography.
Dr. Stanwell-Fletcher was one of the first women to receive a
PhD from Cornell in the then new science of ecology. She and her
husband John lived and studied the wildlife for three years on
mile-long Lake Tetana in the Driftwood Valley wilderness of
remote north-central British Columbia. The time was the years
before WWII when the Province had not yet fallen prey to run-
away logging. Theodora (called Teddy) and John observed and
catalogued plants and animals of the region, collecting for the
Provincial Museum in Victoria. They lived a genuine wilderness
adventure, building their own log cabin on Lake Tetana and
surviving a sub-arctic winter when the snow was over 10 feet
deep. Jack hunted moose for food and both partners fished and
hauled wood daily for fuel.
Wild birds and other animals of the area grew accustomed to
their presence and Teddy and Jack were able to record valuable
observations on wildlife behavior. Some of their most intriguing
observations involved a pack of wolves within whose territory
they were living.
Driftwood Valley won the coveted John Burroughs medal for excel-
lence in nature writing in 1947, Teddy being the first woman
author to win this prestigious award. The book went through 27
printings when it first appeared, but has been out of print for
many years. The last words of Teddy's book are: "Keep safe
Tetana until we come again." To complete my biographical sketch
of Theodora, my husband and I visited Lake Tetana this past
summer to see what changes 60 years had brought to her beloved
Driftwood Valley wilderness. We found logging roads, clearcuts,
and a railroad within a mile of the Stanwell-Fletcher cabin
site, leaving us with the sad feeling that the great diversity
of animal life described in Driftwood Valley must now be greatly
diminished.
I am personally grateful that OSU Press has reissued this clas-
sic as part of their Northwest Reprints series. A new generation
of readers can now come to know this work which I have loved and
admired for over 50 years. By the way, Teddy is still alive at
age 93.
PACIFIC NORTHWEST CONIFERS
From: Rudi Schmid <schmid@socrates.berkeley.edu> & Aljos Farjon
<a.farjon@lion.rbgkew.org.uk>, abbreviated from Taxon 48
(November 1999): 859-860, 863-864, and 868-869.
Farrar, John Laird (with additional text by Ken Farr). 1998.
Trees in Canada on CD-ROM. Canadian Forest Service [Ottawa].
CD-ROM, ISBN 0-660-17394-8, Can$54.95 (from Fitzhenry &
Whiteside, 195 Allstate Parkway, Markham L3R 4T8, Canada).
[Also in French, Les arbres du Canada sur CD-ROM, ISBN 0-660-
95916-X, Can$54.95 [[from FIDES, 165, rue Deslauriers, Saint-
Laurent (Quebec) H4N 2S4, Canada]]. [Computer requirements:
486 or better PCs, Windows 3.1 or higher, or Macintosh, Sys.
7.1 or higher; 16MB RAM.]
Back in Taxon 45: 396, 578, 46: 153-154 Mena Schmid & I gave
rave reviews of the various American, Canadian, and French-
Canadian versions of John Laird Farrar's (1915-96) invaluable
Trees in Canada (1995), Trees of the northern United States and
Canada (1995), and Les arbres du Canada (1996). Hence the nicely
packaged Trees in Canada on CD-ROM (there is also a French-
Canadian version) raised considerable excitement here when it
arrived, but it immediately disappointed on use. The CD-ROM has,
it seems, all of the information in the book, including the many
fine diagrams and photos, plus some new features such as the
capability to show on one screen distribution maps for the
species of a genus (e.g., 9 species Pinus--there is information
for 6 other pine species). However, the CD-ROM is one of the
most user unfriendly ones ever seen (other than those that do
not load at all). I would not go so far as to say that the CD-
ROM was written by a madman, but I do think that madness of one
sort or another will be the result for anyone using this
maladroit product. This list of problems arose within the first
ten minutes of use of the CD-ROM: There is no quick launch
feature, and hence one must suffer through the long loading,
which is cute for one or two times but then is tiresome. The
program takes over the entire screen and can not be run in the
background. Esc exits the program without warning (necessitating
the long reload), and not just the current window. There is no
way to type in a name but instead one has to click on one of the
26 letters of the alphabet and then names thereafter. In some
screens one can only go backward by going forward to a new
screen. Switching betwixt screens is very sluggish (on a Pentium
II/350 with 64MB RAM--my system even crashed switching between
screens). Clicking on habitats for Malus fusca brings up its
fruits. The usable key is the same as in book but it is not in
multiple-entry format. These and many other frustrations deter
from any worth that the CD-ROM has, and if one has the book,
there is absolutely no reason to get the CD-ROM. If programmers
are going to write products for the unintelligensia, they should
not only make sure that the computer programs are usable at all
user levels, but also field test the products both on their
probably very computer-literate children and on their undoub-
tedly quite computer-illiterate parents. I regret to say that
Farrar would roll over in his grave were he to know of this
misguided CD-ROM project done in his name. -- Rudolf Schmid, UC
Lanner, Ronald M. (featuring the art of Eugene O. Murman). 1999.
Conifers of California. Cachuma Press, Box 560, Los Olivos,
CA 93441, USA (cachuma@silcom.com). x, 274 pp., ill. (col.),
ISBN 0-9628505-4-3 [hard cover], US$36.95, ISBN 0-9628505-3-5
[soft cover], US$24.95.
Conifers are often beautiful and fascinating, and Ron Lanner's
latest book on the subject beams this message radiantly from
almost every page. It is probably not by coincidence that he has
chosen the Californian conifers to get this message across. Not
only is the Golden State exceptionally endowed with a multitude
of species (Lanner accepts 52 native species), it appears to
have few rival areas in the world when it comes to superlative
examples of this ancient group of woody plants. It is therefore
most welcome to have a modern account of them that is so well
illustrated (54 full-page watercolors, 165 color photos, 54
color range maps) and that is available at such a modest price.
An interesting feature of this book is that it has made use of
hitherto mostly unpublished watercolors by Eugene O. Murman
(1874- 1962) that depict botanical details for nearly all of the
conifer species in California. Five species, namely ones of
cypress recognized by C. B. Wolf (in Aliso 1: 1-250, 1948) but
not generally accepted (see below), were executed for this book
by Susan Bazell, who admirably approached Murman's style. Range
distribution maps given for each species are based on a little
known publication by J. R. Griffin & W. B. Critchfield (USDA
Forest Service, Pacific Southwest Research Station, research
paper, PSW-82, 1972, with 1976 suppl.), apparently without
additional data; however, the maps are usually adequate in a
state for which the (woody) flora has been so well inventoried,
even by the early 1970s. The color photography, supplied by many
photographers, is generally excellent, indeed in some cases
superb, and includes images by such celebrated nature photog-
raphers as David Muench (my champion among American contem-
poraries in the field). The text is easy going, often almost
anecdotal, and yet informative, I assume, even for the non-
specialist. This, then, is an example of the classic coffee-
table book. The publisher's blurb on the back cover calls it
"both a natural history and field guide" and admittedly, most
coffee-table books are of a larger format and hardbound, but
then, this does not fit the pocket of my coat either. So where
does it fit in among the numerous books on botany or trees, both
popular and professional, that gush forth in a never ending
torrent of print (and I am old-fashioned and would not even
count most electronic disseminations among these)?
The author is a retired forester who lectured and worked for 28
years at Utah State University. Although he has occasionally
written on taxonomy of pines (see his treatment of Pinus quad-
rifolia in SouthW. Naturalist 19: 75-95, 1974), he is not a
taxonomist. It is a good thing in the book that he indicates
where two recent major floristic publications, The Jepson manual
(1993) and Flora of North America (1993), differ from the
taxonomy Lanner accepts in his book (and the floras often differ
from each other). However, although authoritative in their own
right, these are general floras. The compilers of floristic
accounts of specific groups in them may have completed revision-
ary work a priori, but in the cases here relevant they had not,
and certainly could not be expected to do so within the context
of their contributions. Their taxonomy is thus a "workable" one
based on some experience with the group and a consensus derived
from specialist publications. There is, however, more special-
ized and recent taxonomic information which for this book has
rarely been consulted, among which I must mention Farjon & B. T.
Styles's treatment of Pinus in Flora neotropica 75 (1997; for
review see R. Schmid, Taxon 47: 544-546), which contains nine
species of Mexican pines that also occur in Alta California, and
my earlier book Pinaceae (Regnum Veg. 121, 1990; for review see
R. Schmid, Taxon 40: 359-360). In two boxed sections, Lanner
briefly discusses controversies involving California's pinyon
pines and cypresses. In each he indicates how the two 1993
floras treat taxa accepted by him (neither follow his inter-
pretation of Pinus quadrifolia, nor is this accepted by Farjon &
Styles).
One must observe that the descriptive text given under "Iden-
tifying [the species in question]" often hardly deserves that
qualification, which works fine for Sequoiadendron but does not
help with identifying some of the rather dubious, and at any
rate very difficult, species of Cupressus. Sometimes the infor-
mation is more confusing than illuminating: With the Mendocino
cypress (Cupressus pigmaea) on page 177 we read that it is
merely an edaphically determined dwarfed growth form; yet Lanner
seems to accept it as a species despite this observation. The
same is true of the dwarfed form, Pinus contorta subsp.
bolanderi, that occurs on the leached sands of Mendocino. These
are ecotypes, not taxa. For the cypresses Lanner follows Griffin
& Critchfield (1972) (but this is not a taxonomic work), noting
how the two 1993 floras treat them (in one case both do not
accept a species) in order to "allow a diversity of views to be
expressed without overtaxing the reader's patience" (p. 169).
This book, then, is a beautifully executed introduction to the
conifers of California and as such a well-presented production.
I was probably inspired to study conifers more than any other
group of plants when I first experienced the magnificence of the
Californian conifer forests on a visit in 1973, and due to this
enthusiasm I have been back several times since. If Lanner's
book would stimulate the appreciation of these wonderful trees
and forests, as I am sure it will, it is warmly recommended
despite some reservations I have voiced about its taxonomy. --
Aljos Farjon <a.farjon@lion.rbgkew.org.uk>, K
Zahler, David A. & Jensen, Edward C. 1999. Conifers of the
Pacific Northwest. Forestry Media Center, 248 Peavy Hall,
Oregon State University, Corvallis, OR 97331-5702, USA
(www.orst.edu/dept/fmc). CD-ROM, no ISBN, $95.00 ($20.00 for
classes of ò5 - inquiries to Ed Jensen at ed.jensen@orst.edu)
[Computer requirements: 4 86 or better PCs, Windows 95 or up
Macintosh; both 8 MB RAM.
Based on Jensen & C. R. Ross's Trees to know in Oregon, [Rev.
ed.] (1994) and B. Littlefield & Jensen's [Conifer] Trees of the
Pacific Northwest at www.orst.edu/instruct/for241 (see Taxon 48:
202), this nicely done, user friendly (but somewhat sluggish,
even on a Pentium II/350 with 64MB RAM) CD-ROM has mousing
options for terminology, picture keying an unknown, tree lists
(by common or Latin names), and, most importantly, species
information. The last has text and mostly very good color photos
for bark, twigs, leaves, cones ("flowers and fruit" in the
booklet!), range, uses, and species and genus information. The
CD-ROM treats 4 families, 14 genera, and 31 native species (the
booklet states "13 genera" and "nearly 30 species"), including 8
of Pinus and 6 of Abies. The CD-ROM includes audio pronunciation
of the Latin and common names, plus tweeting birds on the open-
ing screen, but no spotted-owl hoot. I also miss a sound effect
for a crashing lumberjacked tree, which would be appropriate as
most conifer taxa in the Pacific Northwest are economically very
important.
I enjoyed using the CD-ROM and, like the predecessor book, found
it very valuable and packed with all sorts of interesting
forestry and botanical information. Here are some teething
problems of the CD-ROM that might be resolvable in later ver-
sions: The introduction needs to define the geographic limits of
the Pacific Northwest. Betraying its origins, the CD- ROM is
still somewhat Oregon-centric; hence see Pseudotsuga or Pinus
contorta, the latter "easy to identify because it's the only
two-needled pine native to Oregon." The range maps are admit-
tedly rough (shading seems to have been done with a felt-tip
marker), but I would prefer not to have so many conifer taxa
supposedly growing in California's hot Central Valley. And the
last I heard, California had not yet drifted tectonically into
the Pacific Northwest. Thus inclusion of the Californian generic
endemic Sequoiadendron is nice but not quite appropriate, nor is
its map accurate, with the species shown in the Central Valley
and extending well into southern California. The mainly Califor-
nian and barely Oregonian Sequoia sempervirens and Cupressus
bakeri are also quasi-Pacific Northwest. Using the interactive
dichotomous key one can end up with three alien species of
Cedrus, which do not appear in the list of names. The menu for
species features could add a button for "ecology." Currently
this information is scattered--for instance, in Pseudotsuga
menziesii among "bark" and "cones" versus the more logical and
informative "fire" paragraph in the book. There might be a
special ecology section for "fire" and other features linking
the scattered information for the various species, or even a
text-search option. Annoyingly, Esc exits the program sans
warning, not just the current window. Incidentally, I miss the
book's charming and useful drawings/cartoons that stress diag-
nostic characters. These remarks should not be construed as
overly negative, especially because any profits from this CD-ROM
are plowed back into other audio-visual projects. In sum, I am
sure this CD-ROM will be a hit with students, but I betray my
age and biases by saying that I still find the book version much
more user friendly. -- Rudolf Schmid, UC
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