OPTIMA Newsletter 38

More documents

Recommendations

Info

Publications adopts represent the ultimate splitting tendency prevailing today, she also deplores this dramatic pulverisation and instead advocates the reintroduction of more broadly defined families subdivided into subfamilies. Whether this means that she would gladly downgrade the categories she uses by one notch, replacing superorder by order, order by family, and family by subfamily, we are left to guess. Oganezova’s own classificatory scheme groups the former Liliiflorae in three superorders, which she believes to have their root in the old Gondwana-Laurasia contact zone in SE Asia: a tropical branch, Dioscoreanae (with the unifamilial orders Dioscoreales and Taccales); and two closely related presumed sister groups, the predominantly N hemispheric Lilianae (Liliales plus the unifamilial Alstroemeriales and Iridales) and the mainly S hemispheric Asparaganae (Asparagales and Amaryllidales). Outside of these, sharing some characters with each and others with none, Haemodoraceae appear to be very old, close to the origin of herbaceous plants and of unclear affinity. Had it been possible to include in this book a significant share of the doubtless huge pictorial material generated by the author in her studies, it would have been a unique compendium of liliiflorous seed anatomy and fruit morphology, a source work for the discipline as a whole. As it is, the drawings provided are barely adequate to illustrate and justify the author’s basic concepts. Even so, her conceptual contribution to monocot systematic is certainly significant. W.G. 18. 17BNiels BÖHLING & Hildemar SCHOLZ – The Gramineae (Poaceae) flora of the southern Aegean Islands (Greece). Checklist, new records, internal distribution. [Ber. Inst. Landschafts- & Pflanzenökol. Univ. Hohenheim (ISSN 0947- 0778), Beih. 16.] – Universität Hohenheim, Stuttgart, 2003. 88 pages, 8 figures (graph, maps), 2 tables; paper. The authors of this new grass inventory have both visited the S Aegean islands, Scholz repeatedly since 1988, Böhling in 1997-2001. They have, in addition, made use of specimens collected by others and deposited in the Berlin Herbarium (B), but apparently not in any other herbaria. Even with this major limitation they have added a surprisingly high number of new distributional data to what uses to be considered as one of the best explored parts of the eastern Mediterranean. Their list of 234 wild and 7 widely cultivated grass taxa includes no less than 6 first records for Europe (4 of them aliens), 15 additions to the Cretan area, 19 to Crete alone, and 4, from Rhodes, previously unknown from the E Aegean area. The list also includes the enumeration of a large number of specimens that enlarge the known provincial or altitudinal distribution of taxa, or confirm old, sometimes doubtful records. Scholz, the well known grass specialist, adopts a “modern”, narrow generic concept. He therefore validates several new combinations in this paper, in the genera Elytrigia (split from Elymus), Schedonorus (traditionally placed in Festuca) and Ochlopoa (originally a section of Poa, here newly raised to generic rank). In other respects, however, his nomenclature is stubbornly antiquated, as in the cases of “Monerma” (correctly Hainardia) and “Aegilops caudata” (for A. markgrafii). W.G. 19. 18BHelmut BAUMANN, Siegfried KÜNKE- LE & Richard LORENZ – Orchideen Europas mit angrenzenden Gebieten. – Ulmer, Stuttgart, 2006 (ISBN 978-3- 8001-4162-3). 333 pages, 639 colour photographs, map and figure on cover inside; laminated cover. This field guide for European orchids is the work, so to say, of old battle horses: Baumann and Künkele (the latter sadly deceased in 2004) have published similar guides in 1982 and 1988 already, in the se- (12) OPTIMA Newsletter No. 38 2009
ies “Kosmos Naturführer”. Also, they have been coordinating for the past few decades the work on mapping Mediterranean orchids, carried out under OPTIMA’s aegis. None better than they would know of the practical needs of those who want to recognise these lovely but highly variable plants in the field, and none could better cope with the restrictions in space and style that a handy field guide imposes. An author team of such skill and knowledge could not fail to produce an excellent book. Speaking of conciseness, introductory matter has been limited to a single page of preface, the minimal necessary explanation of typographical conventions being relegated to the inside of the front cover flap. Author citations for scientific names are absent from the text but can be found in the index by those who need them. Information for taxa is organised under a few well chosen headers, such as (sparing) synonymy, morphology, variation, biology, diagnostic hints, habitat, and distribution. Commendably, a half line of text has been set aside to mention the place and date where each photograph was taken, and the identity of the photographer. Also, descriptions are not of uniform standard length but adapted to the needs of each case. In a book with orchids as its subject the primary question, invariably, is: how many taxa do the authors recognise, at which rank, and how sensibly defined? Here again, the great experience of the authors, both with the plants and their orchidophile colleagues, have led them to adopt wise compromises. They have not foregone the recent, often excessive attempts to cast variation into a formal taxonomic framework, but neither did they feel compelled to adopt each and every new taxon proposed for a local variant or, in Ophrys, each population with a deviating pollinator. They have made fair and reasonable use of the subspecies category to accommodate the less stable and not so well defined, yet distinguishable morphs. By and large, the classification they have adopted is Publications likely to withstand the test by the practical user. The fact that the new, molecular-based reclassification of the genus Orchis (see the next following item) has not been taken up testifies to the author’s caution rather than to their recalcitrance to change. Nowadays in an orchid book one expects that the illustrations meet highest quality standards. It would be surprising if this book were an exception to the rule, which it is certainly not. Its merits, therefore, lie not so much in the beautiful and impeccably neat pictures it presents, but in their usefulness for recognising the plants in the field. It is obvious that the authors have gone to great length to select the most typical and informative among the images at their disposal. When appropriate, as for Himantoglossum and Serapias, they have added dissections of flowers to the customary colour photographs. My concluding wish and advice, then, is that an English edition of this book be prepared, because its being written in German will inevitably and unduly restrict its use among orchid lovers to the relatively few who are familiar with the Teutonic idiom. As one of those privileged few, I have been proud and pleased to find that the authors have chosen to dedicate their work to me. W.G. 20. 19BHorst KRETZSCHMAR, Wolfgang EC- CARIUS & Helga DIETRICH – The orchid genera Anacamptis, Orchis and Neotinea. Phylogeny, taxonomy, morphology, biology, distribution, ecology and hybridisation. 2, edition – translated into English. – Echinomedia, Bürgel, 2007 (ISBN 978-3-937107-12-7). 544 pages, numerous photographs, facsimiles, tables, maps and graphs, mostly in colour; hard cover. In his foreword, Richard Bateman refers to this book as an “integrated monograph”. However defined, this term fits nicely. The authors have indeed contrived to approach 2009 OPTIMA Newsletter No. 38 (13)
Page 1 and 2: OPTIMA Newsletter OPTIMA Newsletter
Page 3 and 4: O P T I M A N E W S L E T T E R O P
Page 33: O P T I M A N E W S L E T T E R O P
Page 36 and 37: Publications century before. This b
Page 38 and 39: Publications spond to the numbering
Page 40 and 41: Publications gía, Murcia, 2003. 61
Page 42 and 43: Publications informative and well w
Page 44 and 45: Publications cies), to which one ma
Page 48 and 49: Publications their subject under a
Page 50 and 51: Publications tographs (16 in colour
Page 52 and 53: Publications ble Spanish botanists
Page 54 and 55: Publications with its own bibliogra
Page 56 and 57: Publications one of the reasons why
Page 58 and 59: Publications parent. For now, we mu
Page 60 and 61: Publications not all of them illust
Page 62 and 63: Publications “Flora u fawna ta’
Page 64 and 65: Publications it, and measure the pa
Page 66 and 67: Publications etc.). The placing of
Page 68 and 69: Publications ences to a wide spectr
Page 70 and 71: Publications with a list of island
Page 72 and 73: Publications The book lists 3201 ta
Page 74 and 75: Publications the basic reference wo
Page 76 and 77: Publications 78. 77BOriol de BOLÒS
Page 78 and 79: Publications Studies of Flora and V
Page 80 and 81: Publications subdivided into three
Page 82 and 83: Publications the Lake’s opposite,
Page 84 and 85: Publications structive by way of th
Page 86 and 87: Publications OTA Yemen project fund
Page 88 and 89: Publications - ultimately based on
Page 90 and 91: Publications recently been merged i
Page 92 and 93: Publications unpublished documentar
Page 94 and 95: Publications Much of the contents o
Page 96 and 97:
Publications gives a lively account
Page 98 and 99:
Publications continuous travels and
Page 100 and 101:
Publications nally presented at a s
Page 102 and 103:
Publications Among the treasures of
Page 104 and 105:
Publications “Herbarium Palmarum
Page 106 and 107:
Publications names in modern langua
Page 108 and 109:
Publications third less than origin
Page 110 and 111:
Publications added on loose sheets)
Page 112 and 113:
Publications New Journals 150. 149B
Page 114:
Informateur OPTIMA / OPTIMA Newslet
show all

OPTIMA Newsletter 38

Create successful ePaper yourself

Delete template?

Save as template?