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BEN # 237
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No. 237 December 14, 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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THE CASE AGAINST OXYCOCCUS (ERICACEAE) AS A GENUS
From: S. P. Vander Kloet, FLS <sam.vanderkloet@acadiau.ca>
Whenever Oxycoccus (Ericaceae) is resurrected as it was, for
example, by Szczawinski in 1962, Seymour (1953) is certain to be
cited with approbation and, as often as not, the "quote" from
Fernald (1950) as well. Unfortunately, Fernald's sense of irony
was completely misrepresented by Seymour who obviously had not
seen the diagnostic features for both sections on page 1131.
Fernald (1959) wrote:
"Corolla deeply 4-parted or -cleft, with reflexed linear lobes,
nodding on long filiform pedicels; anthers exserted, awnless,
with very long terminal tubes; berries red to dark purple,
brown, blackish, or sometimes pale.
Upright shrub with broad deciduous membranaceous serrate leaves;
flowers solitary, axillary, jointed with the pedicel; berries
insipid or sweetish." (subgen.) Oxycoccoides
"Trailing lithe-stemmed evergreens with narrow coriaceous often
revolute entire leaves; flowers solitary or in small racemes
from terminal buds, not jointed with pedicel; berries acid."
Subgen. Oxycoccus
Had Seymour (1953) read the above description for both Oxycoccus
and Oxycoccoides, viz, corolla 4- merous and lobes reflexed at
anthesis, the irony of Fernald's exclamatory statement on p.
1135 would have been self evident!
"V. erythrocarpum Michx. (red-fruited), MOUNTAIN-CRANBERRY,
BEARBERRY.
Woody divergently branched shrub 0.3-2.5 m. high, with exfoliat-
ing bark; leaves oblong- to ovate- lanceolate, acute,
membranaceous, up to 7.5 cm. long and 1-3 cm. broad, closely
serrate; flowers solitary in the axils; corolla deeply 4-cleft
nearly to base into recurving pink or white narrow lobes; an-
thers long-exserted, awnless, with very long terminal tubes;
berry red to brownish or darker, or black in forma nigrum Allard
(black), insipid to sweetish. (Hugeria Small) - Thickets rocky
woods, slopes or summits, mts. of Ga. and Tenn. to W. Va. and w.
Va. Fr. Aug., Sept. - Closely related species in e. Asia; worthy
the thought of those who separate subgen. Oxycoccus as a genus!"
The intent of the exclamation was to demonstrate that his revi-
sion of Gray's manual was indeed substantial and incorporated
new information whenever possible. In this instance, Sleumer's
(1941) taxonomic revision of the Vaccinioidae was adopted in-
stead of Gray's (1867) alignment.
In short, neither reflexed corolla lobes nor the 4-merous condi-
tion are unique to Oxycoccus but are found elsewhere in Vac-
cinium. For example, V. uliginosum L., V. vitis-idaea L., V.
meridionale Sw. and V. crenatum Sleumer, inter alia, are all 4-
merous. Long anther tubules are also widespread in Vaccinium
especially in V. stamineum L. and V. poasanum D. Smith.
Since Oxycoccus is no more different than any other of the
remaining 33 sections (Sleumer, 1941; Stevens 1969), the only
logical approach is to recognize all these sections as genera as
was done by Small in 1933 or to retain them all in Vaccinium as
was done by Luteyn et al in 1998. Surely it is more reasonable
to treat Vaccinium as a comprehensive genus rather than a com-
plex of 33 small genera.
References:
Gray, A., 1867. Manual of Botany of the Northern United States.
American Book Company, NY.
Fernald, M.L. 1950. Gray's Manual of Botany. American Book
Company, NY.
Luteyn, J.L., E.G.H. Oliver & P.F. Stevens. 1998. Ericaceae in:
Kubitzki, K. ed. The Families & Genera of Vascular Plants.
Volume 3 Springer-Verlag, Berlin.
Seymour, F.C. 1953. Oxycoccus as a Genus. American Midland Nat.
49: 934-937.
Sleumer, H. 1941. Vaccinioideen Studien. Bot. Jahrb. Syst. 71:
375-510.
Small, J.K. 1933. Manual of the Southeastern Flora. University
of North Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, NC
Stevens, P.F. 1969. Taxonomic studies in the Ericaceae. Edin-
burgh, Scotland: University of Edinburgh, Ph.D. thesis.
Szczawinski, A.F., 1962. The heather family of British Columbia.
British Columbia Provincial Museum handbook No. 19, Victoria,
BC
LIFE EXPECTANCY OF GERMAN BRYOLOGISTS
From: Eggers, Jens. 1999. Lebensdaten deutscher Bryologen.
Bryologische Rundbriefe 26: 1-17. Translated and abbreviated
by Toby Spribille (Spribille_Toby/r1_kootenai@fs.fed.us).
It seems that German bryologists have run out of mosses to study
and have turned to studying themselves. I found the following
article in Number 26 of the "Bryologische Rundbriefe" (bryologi-
cal circulars) published by Jan-Peter Frahm from Bonn, Germany.
It is a very interesting study of the length of German
bryologists' lives based on birth-and-death dates for 789 German
bryologists. In short, the study finds that German bryologists
live somewhat shorter lives on average than today's average
German male, but that since most of these chaps lived in the
past few hundred years when lives were shorter in general,
German bryologists of today have reason to be optimistic. - TS
But now for our article:
"Like most bryologists, Carl Warnstorf got old, dying at an age
of 83", writes Jan-Peter Frahm in the "Dictionary of German
bryologists" (1995). An expansion of the list of included per-
sons into the entire German-speaking area of central Europe, a
greater consideration of the German bryologists working and
collecting in foreign countries and other additions of data in
the course of the planned illustrated 2nd edition of this dic-
tionary (for which Frahm has asked for my help) gives an oppor-
tunity to answer this question for "most" bryologists. If one
looks at the portraits, especially at the gallery of long-
bearded learned men of the last century, at a time when the
idealistic image had not been yet replaced by trying to look as
young as possible, this impression of bryologists being old men
is re-enforced. But how old did they really get?
Out of a total of about 1150 persons, 789 with known birth and
death dates (rounded to year) were available. This list includes
everything from the 21 year old Friedrich Stolz, who tumbled
down in the Alps, to the native Luebecker, Spilhaus, who went to
Cape Town as a businessman and there died at 101 years old. The
average age lies around 69 years, somewhat under the life expec-
tancy of today's German males and does not differ much from a
comparative international group, made up of 621 non-German
bryologists in the overview by Sayre (1977). In his study, too,
the span reaches from 21 to 96 years and the average is 69.
Since in Sayre's work only authors of moss descriptions are
considered, in other words the real collectors are missing, one
might have expected a different result. Therefore in our German
selection we have a strong representation of those who fell
victim to tropical sicknesses and those who disappeared or were
murdered in foreign countries, especially young people: among
those under 30 for instance Kuehl, Hellwig, Rutenberg, Holst, T.
Vogel, amongst those under 40 Kaernbach, Hildebrandt, Werner,
Leichhardt, Elbert, Kegel, Pabst, Beyrich, Schiede, Zenker,
Buchholz. However, since these two age groups combined comprise
only 5% of the included bryologists, their proportion does not
carry much weight.
Age Number %
20-29 10 1
30-39 30 4
40-49 53 7
50-59 95 12
60-69 169 21
70-79 236 30
80-89 171 22
90-(96) 24 3
(101) 1 0
In addition and rather unexpectedly, many of those who made
tropical voyages reached a considerable age, despite dif-
ficulties and sicknesses; for example Goebel (77), Herzog (81),
Reinwardt (81), Schiffner (82), Graeffe (83), Hasskarl (83),
Ledermann (83), Prinz zu Wied (85), Breutel (87), Drege (87),
Schweinfurth (89), Humboldt (89), Schwanecke (95) and R.A.
Philippi (96). A look at the table shows more than anything that
the lump of entries of the 70-79 and 80-89 year-olds, which
together form over 50% of the whole, justifies the impression
that bryologists live to get especially old. This so much more,
since the life expectancy in the past centuries was clearly
shorter than today.
References:
Frahm, J.-P. 1995. Lexikon deutscher Bryologen. Limprichtia 6:
1-187.
Sayre, G. 1977. Authors of the names of bryophytes and the
present locations of their herbaria. The Bryologist 80(3):
502-521.
Should you like to verify Mr Eggers' calculations, or perhaps
stratify them yourself by century, over 15 pages of raw data,
giving the birth and death dates of each of the 789 people, can
be found on the web at http://www.uni-bonn.de/bryologie/br.htm -
click Nr. 26.
SYNTHESIS OF THE NORTH AMERICAN FLORA - KARTESZ ON THE CD-ROM
From: Adolf Ceska <aceska@victoria.tc.ca>
Kartesz, J.T. & C.A. Meacham. 1999. Synthesis of the North
American Flora, Version 1.0. North Carolina Botanical Garden,
Chapel Hill, NC. ISBN 1-889065-05-6 [CD-ROM] Price: US$495.00
Ordering information: North Carolina Botanical Garden, Campus
Box 3375, Totten Center, Univ. North Carolina at Chapel Hill,
Chapel Hill, N.C. 27599-3375. Credit card orders may also be
placed by telephone; please contact Amy Farstad at the BONAP
office at: 919-962-0578.
For almost two decades, "A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular
Plants of North America ..." has been a standard botanical
reference for North American flora. It was originally published
in 1980 and thoroughly updated in 1994. When the 1994 edition
was published, it was obvious that the next step would have to
be an electronic version of this work. Soon after the book
edition, the list became available on the USDA web page. In
1998, a set of electronic databases was announced as "Digital
Floristic Synthesis of North America", and it was advertised by
Patricia Ledlie Bookseller, Inc. [see BEN # 187]. For some
reason the deal fell through, but in August 1999 the North
Carolina Botanical Garden completed this project and published
"Synthesis" on a CD-ROM (the orders previously placed through
Patricia Ledlie will be honored).
The backbone of the "Synthesis" is the updated Kartesz (1994):
"A Synonymized Checklist of the Vascular Plants of the United
States, Canada, and Greenland." In the "Synthesis" this list is
expanded into a comprehensive database. Common names are added
to the taxonomical lists and about 135 "biological attributes"
are listed for all species, hybrids, and infraspecific taxa.
These "biological attributes" include state/provincial and
national rarity and endemism, nativity, weediness, habit (tree,
shrub, vine, etc.), habitat, trophic level, duration, etc.
The "Synthesis" software was written by Dr. Christopher Meacham,
plant taxonomist and software specialist at the Jepson Her-
barium, University of California at Berkeley. The program is
designed for IBM-compatible computers running Windows 3.1, 95,
98, NT, or 2000 operating systems, with at least 25 MB of avail-
able hard-disk space, a Pentium or faster processor, and mini-
mally 32 MB of RAM. The program can also be used on Macintosh
computers running Virtual PC software, although it is recom-
mended that the computer have components that are comparable to
or better than those indicated above.
The program running the "Synthesis" database is slick. It is one
of the fastest, smartest, and the most user-friendly software I
have ever encountered. By a click of the mouse you can selected
names (with or without the authority, and with or without a
common name) and copy them into a Word or WordPerfect document.
You don't have to type your species lists any more, and the
insertion of species name in any document is almost automatic.
The program displays species' distributions in North American
states or provinces and with the use of "mouse-over" technique,
it displays instantly the source of information for the species'
distribution in the selected state or province. I was surprised
and flattered to see BEN as a source of several records for
British Columbia. Boolean search enables you to make lists of
species with selected attributes for selected areas. The pos-
sibilities are endless.
I browsed through the database and found only very few mistakes.
For instance, Asplenium viride is still listed as A. tricho-
manes-ramosum, Carex enanderi is listed with a wrong authority,
etc. Some spelling mistakes and occurrences based on unvouchered
reports will be cleaned by the feedback of users of the
database. I wish, however, that the database would include
several more fields, namely the total distribution for each
species, Raunkier life forms, and chromosome numbers.
This "Synthesis" should be on a computer of every serious
botanist in North America. I don't understand the pricing policy
of CD-ROM products, but I believe that the price US$495.00 for
"Synthesis" is too high and out-of-reach of average botanists or
smaller botanical institutions in North America. I am convinced
that the North Carolina Botanical Garden would sell at least 30
times more copies if they charged $49.50 (one tenth of the
actual price) for a copy. As a consolation for those who cannot
afford "Synthesis", most of the information is also available on
the following web site: http://plants.usda.gov/plants/
But on a long run, if you have to write a fair amount of botani-
cal names, the "Synthesis" will save you time and nerves.
Further information about BONAP and ongoing work by John Kar-
tesz, a "Synthesis" order form, and an ongoing listing of post-
publication updates to the "Synthesis" database, are all avail-
able on BONAP's web site (http://www.bonap.org).
P.S. I noticed that Dr. Kartesz published 41 new nomenclatural
combinations at the back of the title insert for the CD-ROM.
That's quite a brave challenge to the International Code of
Botanical Nomenclature; I wonder if such a publication can be
considered valid.
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