OPTIMA Newsletter 38

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)