OPTIMA Newsletter 38

graphs, and there are 136 scanning micrographs
with spore surfaces of 116 species.
The book consists of two parts with different
authorship. The first and by far larger
portion is by the editors themselves and
treats the mosses. The second, with the horn-
and liverworts, was written by Hélène Bischler
and Suzanne Jovet-Ast in Paris, at the
Laboratoire de Cryptogamie; Muséum National
d’Histoire Naturelle. The whole work
should better not be considered the fifth
volume of Zohary’s and Feinbrun’s Flora
Palaestina, as some have suggested, as it
differs from the latter in many important
respects, including the area covered; and
while bibliographically it is an (unnumbered)
part of the Flora Palaestina Series, it
is the seventh such part in a chronological
sequence.
As always in a work of large size and
ample scope, the critical minded may raise a
few negative points (e.g. the occasional failure
to conform to the self-set standards of
author and literature citation, or the absence
of references to the colour photographs in
the text) – but these are minor quibbles indeed.
On the whole, the book is a remarkable
achievement. Ilana Herrnstadt, the only
surviving author and editor, has recently
been awarded the OPTIMA Medal in Silver
for what was considered the most outstanding
publication in Mediterranean taxonomic
botany published in 2004, and that
award is well deserved. This flora will
doubtless prove one of the most useful, or
rather, indispensable tools for Mediterranean
bryologists. Its importance is enhanced by
the fact that narrow endemism in bryophytes
is almost unheard of, and so the phrase
“around the Mediterranean” appears in the
general distribution statement of a large
majority of species.
W.G.
4. 3BGiuseppe VENTURELLA – L’iconografia
micologica di Giuseppe Inzenga. –
Archimede, Palermo, 2005 (ISBN 88-
Publications
8820-409-1). Pages 3-271, 3 photographs,
400 facsimiles in colour; hard
cover with dust jacket.
Giuseppe Inzenga (c. 1816-1887), son
of the writer and poet Pompeo, was a colourful
figure in Sicilian botany. Basically an
agronomist, he was appointed to lifetime
directorship of the Istituto Agrario Castelnuovo
in Palermo in 1844, and in 1860 to a
professorship of Agriculture at Palermo University.
He published on a wide range of
subjects, both in his own field and in botany,
notably mycology, most often in the journal
“Nuovi Annali di Agricoltura Siciliana”
founded and edited by him. His main independent
botanical work was “Funghi siciliani”,
published in two centuriae in 1865 and
1869 and illustrated with 18 colour plates.
Of the 200 species of Sicilian fungi there
described, several were new but most or all
remained unassessed.
Giuseppe Venturella found the original
Inzenga herbarium, still faithfully kept in the
library of the Istituto Agrario, containing
most of the species described in the two
published centuriae and the materials for a
third, unpublished one. Associated with several
of the specimens were Inzenga’s handwritten
descriptions, and almost all were
accompanied by original colour illustrations.
Venturella was able to study these materials
and, in many cases, establish their modern
identity. For the present volume he transcribed
the manuscript information, adding
notes of his own for each item. Most importantly,
he included colour reproductions of
the full set of illustrations, most of which,
obviously, had never before been published.
The text of his book is in Italian (or Latin),
but a full English translation has been provided
of both the introductory, biographical
chapter and the author’s own notes.
The book is splendidly produced but not
well organised and difficult to consult, partly
due to numbering. The author’s notes and
the facsimile illustrations have been given
new numbers (1 to 260) that neither corre-
2009 OPTIMA Newsletter No. 38 (3)