OPTIMA Newsletter 38

stance, with all data of the years 1993, 1994,
2005 and 2006).
The value of Mrs. Dinter’s lists as scientific
data sources is enhanced by the presence,
in her personal herbarium, of voucher
specimens of many rare and critical taxa. By
the end of 2007, she had collected about
9000 numbered specimens all over the
Mediterranean area.
W.G.
Chorology
76. 75BArto KURTTO, Raino LAMPINEN &
Leo JUNIKKA – Atlas florae europaeae.
Distribution of vascular plants in Europe,
13, Rosaceae (Spiraea to Fragaria,
excl. Rubus). – Committee for Mapping
the Flora of Europe & Societas Botanica
Fennica Vanamo, Helsinki, 2004 (ISBN
951-9108-14-9). 320 pages (+ 11 pages
on loose sheets), maps, table; paper.
77. 76BArto KURTTO, Sigurd E. FRÖHNER &
Raino LAMPINEN – Atlas florae europaeae.
Distribution of vascular plants in
Europe, 14, Rosaceae (Alchemilla and
Aphanes). – Committee for Mapping the
Flora of Europe & Societas Botanica
Fennica Vanamo, Helsinki, 2007 (ISBN
951-9108-15-5). 200 pages, drawings,
maps, graphs, tables; paper.
Volume 12 of the “Atlas florae europaeae”
(see OPTIMA Newslett. 35: (17-18).
2000), the last to be published in the second
millennium, marked the end of the work’s
first phase, coinciding in coverage with the
first volume of “Flora Europaea”. Much has
changed, last but not least on the personal
level, in the five-year interval between volumes
12 and 13. Of the two pillars of the
“Atlas”, Jaakko Jalas sadly died at the end of
1999 and Juha Suominen retired. Other important
changes concern the mapping grid,
adapted to achieve a common European
standard for biological mapping projects
(while doing away with erstwhile sensible
Publications
exceptions); the technology used, which
now permits the automatic generation, directly
out of a database, of distribution maps
and all sort of useful by-products; and territory
definitions, no longer congruent with
those defined for “Flora Europaea” but altered
to match Euro+Med subdivisions. The
question may be asked: are we thus entering
a new era of relative stability, or rather a
future of permanent change? I can live with
either, provided the project continues, but
instability is the more likely answer. Volume
14 already implements to further territorial
changes: segregation of Malta from Sicily
(joining Med-Checklist, at long last!) and of
Luxemburg from Belgium – the next (separation
of Serbia and Montenegro) being
announced for vol. 15. Also, the position of
project secretary, after two changes in rapid
succession, is now in the able hands of Alexander
Sennikov.
With volumes 13 and 14 published, the
“Atlas” is halfway through Rosaceae, arguably
Europe’s second most complex flowering
plant family (after Compositae). The
spiraeoid and most rosoid genera (including
Rosa and Potentilla) form vol. 13, Alchemilla
and Aphanes, vol. 14; the two next volumes
are to be devoted to the last rosoid genus,
Rubus, and the maloid plus prunoid genera,
respectively. Increasing time lag and independence
of judgement have been gradually
widening the gap between the treatments of
the “Atlas” and of “Flora Europaea” that it
was initially meant to mirror and complement.
Deviations in vol. 13 are most obvious
at generic level, where Comarum, Dasiphora,
Drymocallis and Sibbaldianthe were removed
from but Duchesnea included in Potentilla.
In vol. 14, the difference at species
level is dramatic: of 385 Alchemilla species,
204 are additional to the “Flora Europaea”
treatment. It is a customary feature of the
“Atlas” to document its deviations from the
“Flora” in the introductory part, but in the
future it may prove more space-economic to
list the cases of congruence.
W.G.
2009 OPTIMA Newsletter No. 38 (41)