list of figures - Terry Sunderland

It is somewhat surpising that since Mann and Wendland’s (1864) account, the
majority of studies of the African rattans have been floristic rather than monographic
(Drude, 1895; Wright, 1902; Guinea-Lopez, 1947; Renier, 1948; Robyns and
Tournay, 1955; Irvine, 1961; Russell, 1968; Letouzey, 1978; Dransfield, 1986;
Berhaut, 1988; Morakinyo, 1995b; Tuley, 1995) or have focussed on the economic
contribution of the species of rattan to the forest economy (Pynaert, 1911; Mildbraed,
1913; de Wildeman, 1919; Hédin, 1929; Chevalier, 1936; Dalziel, 1937; Raponda-
Walker and Sillans, 1961; Profizi, 1986). However, a number of botanists described
new species of rattan collected from the lowland tropical forests of Africa as the
botanical exploration of the continent continued (Drude, 1895; de Wildeman, 1904;
Beccari, 1908; Beccari, 1910; de Wildeman, 1916; Burret, 1942). It was, Beccari,
however, the Florentine palm specialist who was the first to attempt any monographic
treatise of the African rattans. His 1908 monographic account of the genus Calamus,
included the descriptions of five new species from Africa. More specifically, the later
(1910) monograph of the African Lepidocaryeae provided the first keys to
identification of the endemic African rattan genera and included full descriptions of all
the species known at that time. Despite the considerable paucity of material at his
disposal, Beccari’s 1910 account provides a useful framework for the classification of
the African rattans. In this regard, it is surprising that his taxonomic treatise of the
African rattans was not adopted by subsequent workers 5 .
Since Beccari’s 1908 & 1910 publications, very little taxonomic work has been
undertaken on the rattans of Africa aside from the floristic studies cited above and
until recently, there was considerable taxonomic confusion associated with these taxa.
In particular, the lack of representative fertile material and adequate field observations
has thwarted any attempt at providing a definitive monograph of this group. The most
recent attempt by Tuley (1995) at providing a preliminary and somewhat popular
account of the taxonomy of the palms of Africa, including the rattans, was certainly
affected by these constraints.
4 As Dransfield (1982) points out, the use of Ancistrophyllum for a rattan palm is invalid anyhow as the
name was earlier published by Göppert in 1841 as a fossil Lepidodendron stem.
5 Indeed, Beccari’s account of Laccosperma ( syn. Ancistrophyllum), in particular, was dismissed
entirely by Russell (1968) despite considerable morphological evidence and field observations
supporting Beccari’s taxonomy.
43