PLANT SCIENCE BULLETIN
FALL 2005 VOLUME 51 NUMBER 3
The Botanical Society of America: The Society for ALL Plant Biologists
Published quarterly by Botanical Society of America, Inc., 4475 Castleman Avenue,St. Louis , MO 63166-0299 . The yearly subscription rate of $15 is included in the membership dues of the Botanical Society of America, Inc. Periodical postage paid at St. Louis, MO and additional mailing office.
Table of Contents
Plants Are Indeed Intelligent ........................................................................................................75
What Are We Teaching In Our Introductory Courses ? ...............................................................77
100th Anniversary Series
Katherine Esau: A Personal Perspective ......................................................................80
News from the Society
2005 Young Botanist of the Year Award Recipients ...................................................83
J.S. Karling Graduate Student Research Award Recipient ...........................................83
BSA Graduate Student Research Award Recipients ....................................................83
Vernon I. Cheadle Student Travel Award ....................................................................84
Phycological Section Student Travel Award ................................................................84
Pteridological Section Student Travel Awards .............................................................84
Letters ...........................................................................................................................................84
Announcements
in Memoriam
Zane B. Carothers. (1924-2005) ....................................................................85
Vincent Ray Francheschi. (1953-2005) .........................................................86
Personalia
Gugenheim Award Supports Michael J. Balick's Ethnobotanical Study of Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia ....... .........................88
A Symposium and Banquet Honoring the Legacy of David E. Fairbrothers ...................................................................88
Brooklyn Botanic Garden names Scot D. Medbury President, CEO ..........89
M. Patrick Griffith Appointed Executive Director of Montgomery Botanical Center ...........................................................................90
Award Opportunities
Harvard University Bullard Fellowships in Forest Research ......................90
American Philosophical Society grant and fellowship programs ...................90
MORPH, Molecular and Organismic Research in Plant History................91
Other News
Evidence of Integrated Signaling in Plants Reported at the First Symposium on Plant Neurobiology .................................................................................93
Revised New York Flora Atlas ....................................................................................94
Books Reviewed ...........................................................................................................................95
BSA Contact Information ..........................................................................................................113
Books Received ..........................................................................................................................114
Botanical Society of America Logo Items ..................................................................................116
Address Editorial Matters (only) to:
Marsh Sundberg, Editor
Dept. Biol. Sci., Emporia State Univ.
1200 Commercial St.
Emporia, KS 66801 -5057
Phone 620-341-5605
email : psb@botany.org
POSTMASTER: Send address changes to:
Botanical Society of America
Business Office
P.O. Box 299
St. Louis, MO 63166-0299
email: bsa-manager@botany.org
Plant Science Bulletin
Editorial Committee for Volume 51
Andrew W. Douglas (2005)
Department of Biology
University of Mississippi
University, MS 38677
adouglas@olemiss.edu
Douglas W. Darnowski (2006)
Department of Biology
Indiana University Southeast
New Albany, IN 47150
ddarnowski2@ius.edu
Andrea D. Wolfe (2007)
Department of EEOB
1735 Neil Ave. , OSU
Columbus, OH 43210-1293
wolfe.205@osu.edu
Samuel Hammer (2008)
College of General Studies
Boston University
Boston, MA 02215
cladonia@bu.edu
Joanne M. Sharpe (2009)
Coastal Maine Botanical Gardens
P.O. Box 234
Boothbay, ME 04537
joannesharpe@email.com
With the onset of a new school year many of us will be rushing to get the "nuts and bolts" of our courses together - - writing syllabi, ordering supplies, checking laboratory equipment, etc. For those of us who are "veterans" this will probably be a routine task that is now second nature. Pull out last terms syllabus and modify the dates. Maybe fine tune it a bit by changing the sequence of topics or adding a little more time to one topic and chopping a bit from another. Pull out last year's supplies order form and again correct the "date needed" and perhaps the quantities required. OK, I'm ready!
The process may be a little more involved for faculty in their middle-years. Will I ever finish digitizing my slide and overhead collection so I can use them in Power Point presentations or post them on the web? How does this grade book in Blackboard™ work and can I incorporate the chat room function into my teaching? And what about all that stuff on the web? And perhaps there's the doubting question - -is this worth the effort?
For new faculty the task can be daunting. During the first term every course is new and everything must be done "from scratch." ( or more likely from the notes and syllabi received as a student taking a similar course). If you're lucky, you'll be more than a day ahead of your students! Then there is the time spent learning what resources the department already has and finding where to order the missing things you'll need to offer the courses the way you want to. Of course, the "rookie" still has the problem of moving all of this information to the electronic format that your newly remodeled classroom (sans 2x2 or overhead projector and chalkboard) requires. Luckily, for most new faculty, this will be an easier transformation than for their more senior colleagues!
Does any of this sound familiar? My guess is that it does. But the middling's concerning question is there - - is this where we should be concentrating our time and effort? In the second article of this issue I summarize what appears to be a standardized syllabus for introductory botany courses around the country, based on syllabi submitted by members following a call for contributions last year. You may or may not be surprised by the results but to me it's a wakening call that is at least partially addressed by David Hershey in his lead article. There are certainly stereotypes about plants, widespread among biology teachers, that we do not do a good job of addressing. One approach is to confront these stereotypes head on with alternative viewpoints and documented examples. David provides some interesting examples that can certainly be incorporated into our introductory botany courses (if we are willing to make a place for them).
Finally, I think most of us will agree that the most important factor influencing how students perceive botany is not the substance of the course but rather the enthusiasm of the teacher. In the third article Ray Evert reflects on his most inspirational teacher _ Katherine Esau. This is the first of a series of tributes to some of the BSA's past-presidents that we will run during the next year and a half to commemorate the Societies first 100 years. I think you'll enjoy it. Have a great academic year! - editor .
EVOLUTION - NEVER:
Tune: God Save the King (My country tis of thee)
God bless our status quo:
Grant that we never grow.
No need to change.
We're perfect as we be:
So was our ancestry.
And thus posterity:
No need to change!
in : Songs of Biology, 4th ed. 1953
Plants Are Indeed Intelligent
Biology Today columnist Maura Flannery (2002) rejected Anthony Trewavas (2002) thesis that plants have intelligence mainly by assuming it was merely an "animal metaphor". However, Trewavas (2002, 2003) was not being metaphorical, he was being literal. Flannery (2002) arbitrarily restricted the term intelligence to "an animal way of doing things." However, Webster's dictionaries don't restrict intelligence to animals.
Webster's dictionaries define intelligence as "the ability to cope with a new situation" (Agnes 2002) or "the ability to learn or understand or to deal with new or trying situations" (Woolf 1973). Flannery (2002) described how plants cope with new or trying situations such as high temperatures, water deprivation, and attacks by herbivores and pathogens. Therefore, no "animal metaphor" is required. Plants literally fit a dictionary definition of intelligence. Trewavas (2002) said effectively the same thing as Webster; plants are intelligent because they have "adaptively variable behavior." Trewavas (1999) has evidence that plants learn, which also qualifies as intelligence according to the dictionary definition.
Flannery (2002) stated that all animals, "even a slug", have higher IQs than any plant. However, several plant species are intelligent enough to produce caffeine, which Flannery (2002) noted is a highly effective pesticide against slugs. Was the inventor of Velcro, George de Mestral, more intelligent than the cocklebur (Xanthium stumarium) which gave him the idea (Jacobs 1996)? Was Joseph Paxton, the designer of London 's famous Crystal Palace of 1851, more intelligent than the giant waterlily (Victoria amazonica) whose leaf venation inspired his design (Carter 1985)? Are the chemists who first synthesized taxol in the laboratory more intelligent than the Pacific yew (Taxus brevifolia), which synthesized it first and provided them with the structure of taxol? Are the thousands of plant products in a supermarket just an indication of human accomplishment or do plants deserve some credit? Humans often take sole credit for accomplishments that were really made by plants. Many people do not seem to realize that "Man and all other animals are in reality guests of plants on this earth" (Karling 1956).
If the modern Plant Kingdom, consisting of bryophytes and vascular plants, was suddenly wiped out, humans would not be able to respond to the "trying situation" without mass starvation. Humans might even go extinct due to wars over, or overexploitation of, the remaining food chains anchored by algae and photosynthetic bacteria. However, if humans were suddenly wiped out, plants would actually benefit in several ways because they could recolonize all the areas occupied by buildings and paving and would no longer have the destructive effects of humans destroying their habitats, overcollecting wild plant species into extinction, introducing nonnative invasive plants, and polluting the air, water and soil. Even if all animals were wiped out, the many plant species that do not depend on animals for pollination and seed dispersal would not be negatively impacted. Even many of the plants that coevolved with animals might be able to survive without them.
Common themes in science fiction, and goals of real science, are human cloning and suspended animation for long space voyages. However, plants have used cloning and suspended animation for over 100 million years. Seeds can survive in suspended animation for decades or centuries (Shen-Miller et al. 1995). Plants have numerous cloning methods such as adventitious plantlets, apomictic seeds, bulbs, corms, fragmentation, layering, rhizomes, runners, suckers, and tubers. Flannery (2002) noted the "problem" Trewavas (2002) was addressing as "the view of plants as passive and therefore not very interesting organisms". However, Trewavas (2002) was only dealing with the view of plants as passive. He never stated or implied that plants were "not very interesting." Given that Flannery (1999) wrote a column on plant blindness, it would have been much more desirable to have stated the problem more accurately, i.e. "Although a common misconception, it is a huge mistake to view plants as passive or uninteresting." Flannery (1999) actually dismissed the misconception of plants as uninteresting rather well when she asked "Why deprive ourselves of the joy of learning about organisms that have come up with so many fascinating strategies to deal with the challenge of life on Earth."
How can parasitic and carnivorous plants be considered passive when they are stealing energy and nutrients from other plants or murdering animals, respectively? The strangler figs (Ficus aurea and other Ficus spp.) are notorious for murdering their host trees. Plants are constantly battling each other to the death. Even seemingly harmless epiphytes are considered "nutritional pirates" who intercept mineral nutrients and effectively steal from their host trees (Benzing 1980). Plants may be stationary but their seeds or fruits may fly, float, be forcibly discharged or carried by animals to other locations. Fruits of coconut (Cocos nucifera) may float for hundreds of km in the ocean, and the fruit of the sandbox tree (Hura crepitans ) "explodes" when it dries and can forcibly discharge its seeds up to 100 m (Ray et al. 1983).
Plants also face hordes of herbivores and pathogens, resource shortages and harsh environments. It is hardly passive that plants use a multitude of mechanical and chemical weapons and ally themselves with a variety of bacteria, fungi and animals in their battle for survival. Their allies include nitrogen-fixing bacteria, mycorrhizal fungi, animal pollinators, animal seed dispersers, endophytic fungi and endophytic bacteria and even ants that serve as live-in bodyguards. Plants not only communicate with other plants, they communicate with their allies. For example, an Acacia tree produces a chemical in its flowers that tells its ant bodyguards not to attack the insect pollinators that visit the flowers (Ghazoul 2001).
The sizzling sex life of plants is hardly passive either. Plants flaunt their sex organs and often advertise them with flashy petals or bracts, delicious fragrances or a horrible stench. Some flowers even generate heat to attract pollinators or better disperse floral scents ( Seymour 1997). Jack-in-the-pulpit (Arisaema triphyllum ) changes its sex depending on the resources available (Policansky 1987). Plants fill the air with untold trillions of pollen grains. Plants sometimes even trick animals into pollinating their flowers or dispersing their seeds without giving them the expected rewards.
Contrary to Flannery (2002), I think it is a fundamental requirement that students be able to contrast animal and plant strategies to deal with basic challenges, such as energy accumulation, environmental sensing, solid and liquid intake, gas exchange, waste disposal, internal transport, mechanical support, temperature control, defense, growth and reproduction. If students are not able to describe how plants meet these basic biological challenges, then they are suffering from plant blindness. Darley (1990) noted that plants' nutritional mode requires them to be stationary because they are "collectors and concentrators" and concluded that "If we feel animals are superior, it is only because we are animal chauvinists" (Darley 1990). Whether called animal chauvinism, plant blindness or plant neglect (Hershey 1993, 2002, Hoekstra 2000, Wandersee and Schussler 1999), the problem remains that there are many biology teachers, and thus their students, "whose familiarity with plants is little more than skin-deep" (Nichols 1919). Perhaps Trewavas (2002) discovery that plants are intelligent might make biology teachers take plants a bit more seriously. David R. Hershey, dh321z@yahoo.com
Literature Cited
Agnes, M. E. (2002). Webster's NewWorld Compact Desk Dictionary and Style Guide. New York : Hungry Minds.
Benzing, D.H. (1980). Biology of the Bromeliads . Eureka, California: Mad River Press.
Carter, T. (1985). The Victorian Garden. New York: Salem House.
Darley, W.M. (1990). The essence of "plantness." American Biology Teacher, 52, 354-357.
http://www.plantbio.uga.edu/courses/pbio1210 /plantness.html
Flannery, M.C. (1999). Seeing plants a little more clearly. American Biology Teacher, 61, 303-307.
Flannery, M.C. (2002). Do plants have to be intelligent? American Biology Teacher, 64, 628-633.
Ghazoul, J. (2001). Can floral repellents pre-empt potential ant-plant conflicts. Ecology Letters, 4, 295-299.
Hershey, D.R. (1993). Prejudices against plant biology. American Biology Teacher, 55, 5-6.
http://www.angelfire.com/ab6/hershey/prejudices.htm
Hershey, D.R. (2002). Plant blindness: "We have met the enemy and he is us." Plant Science Bulletin, 48, 78-85.
http://botany.org/bsa/psb/2002/psb48-3.html#Plant
Hoekstra, B. (2000). Plant blindness: The ultimate challenge to botanists. American Biology Teacher, 62, 82-83.
Jacobs, M.I. (1996). Unzipping Velcro. Scientific American, 274(4), 116.
Karling, J.S. (1956). Plants and man. American Biology Teacher, 18, 9-13.
Nichols, G.E. (1919). The general biology course and the teaching of elementary botany and zoology in American colleges and universities. Science, 50, 509-517.
Policansky, D. (1987). Sex choice and reproductive costs in jack-in-the-pulpit, BioScience, 37, 476-481.
Ray, P.M., Steeves, T.A. and Fultz, S.A. (1983). Botany. Philadelphia: Saunders.
Seymour, R.S. (1997). Plants that warm themselves. Scientific American, 276(3), 104-109.
Shen-Miller, J., Mudgett, M.B., Schopf, J.W., Clarke, S. and Berger, R. (1995). Exceptional seed longevity and robust growth: Ancient sacred lotus from China. American Journal of Botany , 82, 1367-1380.
Trewavas, A, (1999). How plants learn. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences , 96, 4216-4218.
http://nature.berkeley.edu/luanlab/pdfs/comment.pdf
Trewavas, A. (2002). Mindless mastery, Nature , 415, 841.
http://www.biology.ed.ac.uk/plant/PDF/2002/Trewavas -2002-841.pdf
Trewavas, A. (2003). Aspects of plant intelligence. Annals of Botany, 92, 1-20.
http://aob.oupjournals.org/cgi/content/full/92/1/1
Wandersee, J.H. and Schussler, E.E. (1999). Preventing plant blindness. American Biology Teacher, 61, 82, 84, 86.
Wandersee, J.H. and Schussler, E.E. (2001). Toward a theory of plant blindness. Plant Science Bulletin, 47, 2-9.
http://botany.org/bsa/psb/2001/psb47-1. html#Toward_a_Theory_of_Plant
Woolfe, H.B. (1973). Webster's New Collegiate Dictionary . Springfield, Massachusetts: G. and C. Merriam Company.
What Are We Teaching In Our Introductory Courses?
Last year in these pages I requested that members submit a copy of their introductory botany course syllabus to be used in comparing what is being taught to introductory students in a variety of institutions from around the country. Forty members responded and their syllabi form the basis of the following summary. It includes 15 introductory courses for botany majors, the botany component of 11 introductory biology courses for majors, and non-majors botany courses from 14 institutions. Among these were two of the "best" botany departments and two of the "best" comprehensive university biology departments based on their course offerings (PSB 50(1): 2-7). Only 2 schools had a multi-term sequence of required botany. Eighty-one percent of the majors' botany courses had a corresponding laboratory while 89% of the majors' biology courses had a laboratory component. Only 38% of the nonmajors' botany courses had a laboratory experience. While not a large response, the breadth of the sample suggests that the syllabi submitted present a fair representation of what is covered today in introductory botany courses around the country.
To score coverage, the majors' botany courses were used as a standard. Only topics receiving a full lecture of coverage in a majors' syllabus were scored. For each topic identified in this way the percentage of syllabi including that topic in each category was calculated. These topics were then ranked in descending order of coverage in majors' botany courses (Table 1)
Before examining the content of the introductory course, it will be useful to reflect briefly on the purposes this course fulfills. A major purpose is to provide a solid foundation for subsequent courses in the discipline. A second function is to begin to develop some of the skills necessary for students to become proficient practitioners in the discipline. A third function is to attract students to the discipline. With these goals in mind we can begin to evaluate the effectiveness of our course.
It quickly became evident that there is considerable uniformity in the topics covered _ particularly in the botany majors' course. Survey of the plant kingdom, sensu lato is a major component of more than 70% of all majors' courses. Angiosperms and gymnosperms are particularly popular, occurring in more than 90% of all courses. Photosynthesis and organ systems, roots, stems and leaves, earned at least a full lecture each in 87% of the courses reported. By comparison, in the majors' biology course only photosynthesis was covered in more than 70% of the courses. In terms of survey, only gymnosperms and bryophytes were covered in more than half of the courses. Not surprisingly, coverage of these topics in the nonmajors' courses was much lighter. The one exception is organ systems. While only 1/3 of the courses spent a full lecture on each system, another third combined the three in a single lecture. Overall, the structure of roots, stems, and leaves, at 72%, is the most commonly included topic in the nonmajors' syllabus.
Table 1. Topics Covered (Percent) in: Introductory Botany Courses for Majors; Majors' Biology; and Non-majors Botany Courses.
Topic Botany Biology Non-majors
Gymnosperms 0.93 0.55 0.36
Angiosperms 0.93 0.45 0.29
Roots 0.87 0.45 0.36
Stems 0.87 0.45 0.36
Leaves 0.87 0.45 0.36
(Plant Structure) 0.36
Photosynthesis 0.87 0.73 0.36
Fungi 0.80 0.45 0.29
Algae 0.73 0.45 0.50
Bryophytes 0.73 0.55 0.29
Ferns & Allies 0.73 0.18 0.21
Taxon & Systematics 0.73 0.36 0.50
Life Cycles 0.67 0.27 0.43
Transport 0.67 0.36 0.14
Secondary Growth 0.60 0.18 0.21
Cells 0.60 0.73 0.43
Flowers 0.53 0.27 0.36
Tissues 0.53 0.55 0.50
Prokaryotic 0.47 0.64 0.21
Development 0.47 0.45 0.21
Hormones 0.47 0.36 0.29
Meiosis 0.47 0.45 0.21
Environmental Effects 0.47 0.27 0.07
Respiration 0.45 0.60 0.29
Cell Cycle 0.40 0.45 0.14
Fruits 0.40 0.09 0.21
Mineral Nutrition 0.40 0.45 0.29
Water relations 0.40 0.18 0.29
Biological Evolution 0.27 0.45 0.36
Biomolecules 0.27 0.45 0.07
General or Plant Ecology 0.33 0.27 0.50
Economic Botany 0.27 0.09 0.64
In the group of topics constituting between about 50% and 70% coverage, life cycles and transport were the most common topics for majors. Not surprisingly, fewer than a third of the biology majors covered life cycles but more than 40% of the nonmajors address this topic. Cell structure and prokaryotic cells are the only topic in this group of concepts that is covered more extensively in majors' biology than in the majors' botany course. Plant tissues (xylem and phloem) is the only topic covered about equally in all three course types - - about 50%. Development, hormones and meiosis are treated about equally in the two majors' courses. Noteworthy (if you've ever questioned a student about it during a masters or Ph.D. examination) is that fewer than half of the majors' courses spend a full lecture on meiosis!
The final group of topics, covered in about 30-50% of the majors' courses, include several concepts that receive greater coverage in the biology course. Notable discrepancies involve respiration, biological molecules, and evolution. Given the emphasis on plant kingdom, it was surprising to see the general concepts of evolution covered in only about ¼ of the botany majors' courses. In fact, the non-majors botany courses provided greater coverage. Two other topics that received greater coverage in the nonmajors' than the major's courses were ecology and economic botany. The surprise here is not so much that nonmajors' get more economic botany but that majors' get less ecology.
The weighting of topics covered provides some indications of all three of the purposes of the introductory course. Frequency of coverage should be a good indicator of what concepts are considered foundational to the discipline. The topics covered also may suggest the kinds or skills that will be required and give some indication of interest to students. Perhaps a better indicator of the latter is what is the first topic covered in the course? Can it serve as a good hook to catch students attention and draw them to the discipline? Table 2 indicates the frequency of the initial topics, by course type.
Table 2. Initial Topic Covered in Introductory Course.
Topic Botany Biology Non-majors
Evolution (Survey) 0.44 0.67 0.15
Cells 0.19 0.22 0.08
Organs 0.12 0 0.23
Molecules 0.12 0.11 0
Nature of Science 0.06 0.11 0.08
Ecology 0.06 0 0.30
Plants and People 0 0 0.15
Given the emphasis on survey in the majors' botany course it is not surprising that the majority of courses begin with this information. What was surprising was the number of majors' biology courses that did the same thing. The difference here was that in the biology course the first lecture usually concerned general evolutionary principles (as do several popular textbooks). The survey component, of all the diversity of life, usually fell somewhere in the middle of the course.
So what about the laboratory? The percentage coverage of lab topics is presented in Table 3.
Table 3. Topics Covered (Percent) in Introductory Laboratories for Botany Majors, Biology Majors, and Non-majors' Botany.
LABS Majors Biology Non-majors
Gymnosperms 0.92 0.25 0.6
Angiosperms 0.77 0.25 0.2
Algae 0.69 0.75 0.8
Fungi 0.8 0.38 0.4
Fruit 0.8 0.25 0.4
Cells 0.54 0.63 0.4
Flowers 0.54 0.25 0.4
Photosynthesis 0.54 0.25 0.6
Stems 0.54 0 0.4
Water Relations 0.54 0.5 0.4
Taxonomy 0.46 0 0.4
Leaves 0.46 0.13 0.4
Roots 0.46 0 0.4
Seedless Plants 0.46 0.5 0.6
Bryophytes 0.38 0.5 0.4
Microscopy 0.38 0.38 0.6
Prokaryotes 0.38 0.25 0.4
Secondary Growth 0.38 0.13 0.2
Tissues 0.38 0.13 0.2
Mitosis/Meiosis 0.31 0.38 0
Roots/Stems/:eaves 0.31 0.63 0.2
Seeds & Germination 0.31 0.38 0.2
Perhaps the biggest surprise here is the lower coverage of plant diversity in the majors laboratory relative to the lecture. While the percent coverage of diversity is lower In the non-majors course, there is nearly a 1:1 correspondence between lecture and laboratory. This is not true for the botany majors. My biggest surprise with this data is that only 1/4 of the biology majors' lab courses include a lab on photosynthesis! This is a significant drop from lecture coverage of a basic biological concept - - that happens to be botanically oriented!
What does the information summarized above tell us about what we are covering in our introductory botany courses? What it tells me is that there is a lot of inertia in the botany curriculum! The distribution of effort in the majors botany course looks very similar to what I experienced as an undergraduate nearly 40 years ago! This is despite the growing body of literature demonstrating that exposing students to a breadth of content is NOT an effective way for them to learn the content we want them to learn. Is this approach successful in achieving the purposes of the introductory course? Is it providing a solid foundation for anything or is it simply providing a (often bitter) taste of everything? Is it developing analytical and critical thinking skills or is it simply encouraging rote memorization? Is it successful in attracting students to botany or is it reinforcing a stereotype of botany being dull, and unexciting? I know what I think - - it's time to reevaluated the content of freshman botany! Marshall D. Sundberg, Emporia State University.
Objective Tests
Tune: Reuben, Reuben
Teacher, teacher, I've been thinking:
What an ogre you must be.
When you put a simple freshman
Throught this torrid third degree.
Does Planaria have a coelom?
Does a tapeworm have a mouth?
Are the uropods of Crayfish
On the north side or the south?
What mysterious process makes the
Tail of tadpole disappear?
Is the gene for epilepsy
Linked to that for drinking beer?
Leeuwenhoek, the mighty searcher,
Can you tell if he did see
In the depths of dank dish-water
Tiny animalcule?
Who invented evolution?
Planted phylogenetic trees?
Are diseases caused by germ cells?
How did Mendel cook those peas?
Indicate by plus or minus:
Bedbugs breed bubonic plague.
Tsetse carries sleeping sickness
On the tarsus of its leg.
Cysticercus lurks in liver.
Eyes of fruitflies are convex
Tricky Trichinella's toxic.
Kinsey first discovered sex.
Corti cooked up protoplasm,
Weismann's theme goes on and on.
Robert Hooke discovered hookworm.
What did Schleiden say to Schwann?
Socrates had lively pupils
Who enjoyed their little jests.
They gave hemlock to their teacher
For inventing true-false tests.
Fellow students, we must always
Greek tradition emulate.
Givers of objective quizes
Should expect a martyr's fate.
F. G. Brooks, Cornell College in : Songs of Biology, 4th ed. 1953.
100th Anniversary Series
Katherine Esau: A Personal Perspective
Ray F. Evert
I first learned of Katherine Esau in 1953, when I was enrolled in David A. Kribsplant anatomy course at PennState . During the first class session, Dr. Kribs, my M.S. mentor, expressed great disappointment that Dr. Esau's new book Plant Anatomy (lst edition, Wiley, 1953) was not yet available for class use. Throughout the course, Dr. Kribs spoke glowingly of Dr. Esau as he cited one after another of her papers. It was quite clear that she was an exceptional person.
When I obtained a copy of Plant Anatomy, I was enrolled in a seminar conducted by Dr. Kribs, the seminar topic: the phloem tissue. Unlike the rather dull approach to plant anatomy taken by the book previously used in Dr. Kribscourse, Esaus Plant Anatomy took a dynamic, developmental approach, which enhanced ones understanding of and interest in plant structure. I was not the only one so affected. Plant Anatomy had an immediate impact worldwide and literally brought about a revival of the discipline. It soon became known as the Bible.
Having read Plant Anatomy from cover to cover, by the end of the phloem seminar I was hooked. I would go on to pursue the Ph.D. in botany, become a plant anatomist, and work on phloem. Dr. Kribs tried to dissuade me from pursuing a career as a plant anatomist. After all, there was no future in plant anatomy. When he realized that I was determined to do so, he said, Well then, you must go to Davis so that you can learn from Katherine Esau. I certainly knew who Katherine Esau was. But, where was Davis? Unknown to me at the time, Dr. Kribs wrote to Dr. Esau on my behalf. His letter must have been fairly convincing, because, to my very good fortune, Dr. Esau agreed to have me as a student. Also, a teaching assistantship would be available for me.
In August 1954, I packed my car (a Hudson shaped like an inverted bathtub) with all my earthly possessions and headed west to the Golden State. It certainly was an exciting time. When I arrived in Davis (it was on a weekend), I called Dr. Esau and made an appointment to meet with her on Monday morning. I arrived early that morning and watched as a distinguished-looking woman pulled up to the botany building (a garage converted into a few offices, a laboratory, and classrooms) on a bicycle. As the appointed time approached and no one else appeared, I realized that I had seen Dr. Esau. That first meeting with Dr. Esau was comforting. She proved to be a friendly person, with a wonderful sense of humor. She asked me if I knew that Davis (population at the time, probably less than 10,000) had a subway. It was the name given to the railway underpass at the town entrance from what is now Interstate 80.
Dr. Esau already had examined my PennState transcripts and had prepared a list of the courses I would take to fulfill the requirements for the Ph.D. in Botany. French and German reading requirements were included. Before my first week at Davis had passed, Dr. Esau and I had agreed on my research topic: a study of seasonal phloem development in the pear tree, a study that would parallel that conducted by Dr. Esau on the grapevine. During the first year and one-half, I met weekly with Dr. Esau as we examined my latest tissue preparations. During that period, Dr. Esau patiently taught me how to examine tissue critically, how to interpret developmental stages, and how to see things many investigators overlook. There was a running conversation, during which Dr. Esau shared her thoughts and her insights. After I was weaned, the meetings became less frequent. Periodic, written progress reports were expected, but she was always available and gave unselfishly of her time.
I have often thought that Dr. Esau's life story would make a best-selling novel, beginning with her early years in Czarist Russia, and her family's flight from the Bolsheviks on a German troop train to Berlin (a journey that lasted two weeks from 20 December, 1918, to 5 January, 1919, because of many delays along the way). There she continued her studies at the Berlin Landwirtschaftliche Hochschule with the then famous geneticist Erwin Baur as an advisor. In 1922 the Esaus immigrated to America, passing through Ellis Island on their way to Reedly, California, a largely Mennonite Community. From 1924 to 1927 Dr. Esau worked at Spreckels to develop a sugar beet resistant to the curly-top disease, a viral disease transmitted by the beet leafhopper. In the fall of 1927 she moved to Davis with a truckload of sugar beets to begin working for the Ph.D. in Botany. She planned to continue work on developing a curly-top resistant sugar beet for her Ph.D. research. However, unexpected circumstances required her to change the direction of her Ph.D. research to a study on the development of both healthy and diseased sugar beets, with the aim of determining the effect of the virus on the plant. Fortuitously her research area would be plant anatomy or, more specifically, pathological anatomy. Upon the receipt of the Ph.D. (from U.C. Berkeley, December, 1931), Dr. Esau was appointed Instructor of Botany and Junior Botanist in the Experiment Station of the College of Agriculture. Thus began her distinguished teaching and research career on the faculty at Davis. She served six years, the maximum number, in each rank until the attainment of full professorship in 1949, at the age of 51. (Dr. Robbins, chairman of the Botany Division, did not believe in accelerated promotions.) In 1962, a year before retirement, Dr. Esau moved to Santa Barbara in order to continue her collaborative research on phloem with Dr. Vernon I. Cheadle, who had been appointed Chancellor of the U.C. Santa Barbara campus. She had begun a second career. Dr. Esau considered her years at Santa Barbara to be her most productive and satisfying. She published her last research paper at the age of 92.
The facilities in the Botany Division at Davis when Dr. Esau began her faculty career were poor, to say the least. Because microscopy would be critical to her research, Dr. Esau purchased a research quality microscope with proper illumination. (The standard illumination source in the Botany Division at the time was a blue-tinted light bulb mounted in an asparagus can.) She also purchased photomicrographic equipment, which later was moved to a make-shift darkroom in a house built by her family in 1938. During the 40s and 50s all of her published photomicrographs, including those for the first edition of Plant Anatomy , were home products. When Dr. Esau built a second house in Davis, it was made square so that a new darkroom could be located exactly in the center, free of any windows and light leaks. When she moved to Santa Barbara she searched for and found an apartment suitable for a large built-in work bench with drawers large enough to store many of the drawings and diagrams used for her books and research papers.
Dr. Esau made virtually all of the drawings and diagrams used in her publications. Recently, while thumbing through some of the German textbooks she used as a student in Berlin , I discovered pages of drawings she made during her taxonomy classes. The drawings are amazingly beautiful and accurate, and accompanied by detailed notes, all in German. She was a talented artist.
Being of Mennonite stock, Dr. Esau was highly disciplined. Everything she undertook, she did with great care and with excellence. She often told me: "Ray, one can never be too careful." She was fluent in Russian, German, French, and English, which she spoke without an accent, and had a reading knowledge of several other languages as well. This command of languages permitted Dr. Esau to read all of the pertinent literature, which she did with relish. By the late 1930s she had written numerous research articles and two important review articles: Some anatomical aspects of plant virus disease problems . Bot. Rev. (Lancaster) 4:548-579, 1938, and Development and structure of the phloem tissue. Bot .Rev. ( Lancaster) 5:373-432, 1939. Within just eight years after receiving the Ph.D., Dr. Esau was recognized as one of the worlds foremost plant anatomists. Perhaps, even more surprising, she had never taken a course in plant anatomy; moreover, her Ph.D. research committee did not include an anatomist. There were no plant anatomists at either Davis or Berkeley at the time.
Dr. Esau visiting U.W. Madison, spring, 1968 - courtesy of Ray Evert
Dr. Esau was exceedingly neat and well organized. There was a place for everything and everything was in its place. All of the pencils were needle-sharp, of uniform length, with the points oriented in the same direction. (One colleague described Dr. Esau's house the most efficient in all Davis.) Her research notes and records are a sight to behold: printed by hand, they are thoroughly documented and clearly legible. Virtually anyone could use them without difficulty to reconstruct her research or to find a related print or negative.
Dr. Esau led a relatively Spartan life. Her meals were simple but well balanced, with lots of fruit. She often made a meatloaf that she would then freeze, so as to save time preparing dinners. She rarely, if ever overindulged. One of her favorite candies was chocolate mints which she would ration out to herself two a day. She also exercised and took walks daily.
Except for osteoporosis, Dr. Esau enjoyed excellent health into her early 90s. At 92, she had to undergo a hip replacement. The operation took place just five weeks before I was to travel to Santa Barbara for a working session with her. She would not hear of my postponing the visit. By the time I arrived, she was back on her feet and driving her car.
When Dr. Esau joined the faculty at Davis, she as assigned to teach Plant Anatomy, Systematic Botany, Morphology of Crop Plants, and Microtechnique. Although she was pleased with her appointment in the Experiment Station, it would afford her time for research, she was apprehensive about teaching. The apprehension was short-lived. With her total command of and enthusiasm for the subject matter, and her delightful sense of humor she was a truly outstanding teacher. On one occasion when she began an anatomy lecture humorously with "Once upon a time…" ,one of my fellow graduate students quipped: "Aha, another of Esau's fables!"
Dr. Esau was a gifted storyteller, an attribute that contributed significantly to her effectiveness as a teacher. Many a group of graduate students were captivated with her accounts of life in Czarist Russia, of her family's escape from the Bolsheviks, of her experiences as a student in Berlin, etc. Her sense of humor and compulsion as a storyteller are reflected in her story of The Saga of Vladimir the Virus , or the Account of the Tragic Fate of Norman the Nucleus, which she illustrated with electron micrographs. It is an account of the sequence of development of infection of sugar beet leaves with the beet western yellow virus.
Dr. Esau read extensively in English, German, and Russian. Her library contained a broad variety of books, novels (The Grapes of Wrath, The Great Gatsby, Wuthering Heights, For Whom the Bells Toll, among others), biographies, and historical books, especially Russian history. She loved opera, fine art, and classical music. Her radio was always tuned to the classical music station of Public Radio. She was a Renaissance woman.
Although she was not particularly religious, Dr Esau's roots as a Mennonite were very deep. When she passed away, the bulk of her estate went to a Mennonite college in Indiana and to a Mennonite retirement home in Canada . Deeply devoted to her
parents, her ashes were interred next to her mother and father at the Davis cemetery with a Mennonite-inspired memorial service. She was 99 years old when she died.
I consider myself most fortunate not only in having had Dr. Esau as a mentor but also as a close friend. In 1989, I had the honor of receiving on her behalf the National Medal of Science from President Bush. At that time Dr. Esau was just the sixth woman over a 27 year period to be so honored. The citation read: In recognition of her distinguished service to the American community of plant biologists, and for the excellence of her pioneering research, both basic and applied, on plant structure and development, which has spanned more than six decades; for her superlative performance as an educator, in the classroom and through her books; for the encouragement and inspiration she has given a legion of young, aspiring plant biologists; for providing a special role model for women in science.
Works about Katherine Esau
Evert, R.F. Katherine Esau. Plant Science Bulletin 31 (5):33-37 (1985).
Russell, D. Life in Czarist Russia: a conversation with Katherine Esau. Soundings: Collections of the University Library 23 (29):5-32. University of California, Santa Barbara (1992).
OHern, E.M. Katherine Esau. The Botanical Review 62 (3):209-271 (1996).
Turpentine
Tune: "Clementine"
1
In a pine tree
In the barrens
Overgrown with poison vine,
Grows a substance,
Soft and jummy,
And it's name is turpentine.
Chorus
Oh my sticky,
Oh my gummy,
Oh my oily turpentine.
I will put you
In my bottle.
Then I know that you'll be mine.
continued on p. 94
News from the Society
2005 Award Recipients:
2005 YOUNG BOTANIST OF THE YEAR Award
Certificate of Special Achievement
Bishop, Andrew Ohio University, Department of Environmental and Plant Biology
Caravello, Tanisha California State University, Davis, Department of Plant Sciences
Clopton, Jessica University of Connecticut , Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Culpepper, Erin E. James Madison University, Department of Biology
Douglas, Ryan Truman StateUniversity , Division of Science
Dunn, Emily Truman StateUniversity , Division of Science
Gray, William California State University, Chico, Department of Biological Sciences
Isaacson, Karin Barnard College, Department of Biological Sciences
Israel, Sarah Barnard College, Department of Biological Sciences
Jensen, Nicholas California State University, Davis, Department of Plant Sciences
Johnson, Eric E. Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Plant Biology Department
Jones, Jeffrey North Carolina StateUniversity , Department of Botany
Lopez-Smith, Renee Southern Illinois University, Carbondale, Plant Biology Department
McGrath Taylor, Kelly A. Truman State University, Division of Science
Nguyen, Hanh Truman State University , Division of Science
Shannon, Sarah M. California State University , Davis, Department of Plant Sciences
Stewart, Jodi University of California, Santa Cruz,
Taylor, Mackenzie L. Truman State University, Division of Science
Uyeda, Josef Willamette University
Withers, John Ohio University , Department of Environmental and Plant Biology
2005 J. S. KARLING GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH AWARD
Daniel Fulop, Harvard University (Supervisor: Elena M. Kramer) - “Integrating phylogeny, biomechanics and pollination ecology in a study of the genus Catasetum (Orchidaceae)”
2005 BSA GRADUATE STUDENT RESEARCH AWARD
Michelle Barthet, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Supervisor: Khidir W. Hilu)_"Molecular and Genetic analysis of the matK gene"
Iju Judy Chen, University of Florida (Supervisor: Steven R. Manchester) "Fossil records and phytogeography of Vitaceae, the grape family"
Susan E. Elliott, Dartmouth College, (Supervisor: Rebecca E. Irwin) "Distinguishing between pollen-limitation and pollinator-limitation of seed production for the perennial bumblebee-pollinated plant, Delphinium barbeyi (Ranunculaceae)."
Courtney C. Finch, Saint LouisUniversity (Supervisor: Janet C. Barber) _ "Pollination Biology and Evolution of the Orchid Genus Thelymitra "
Nicole A. Hardiman, University of Cincinnati, Department of Biological Sciences (Supervisor: Theresa Culley) _ "Intra-Specific Hybridization as a Mechanism of Invasiveness in Pyrus calleryana"
Rebecca Hufft, University of California, Santa Cruz, Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology (Supervisor: Ingrid M. Parker) _ "Mechanisms maintaining coexistence of sympatric cytotypes of Arnica cordifolia (Asteraceae)"
G. K. Johnson, Wake Forest University, Department of Biology (Supervisor: William K. Smith) "Evaluation of cloud emersion, acidic deposition, leaf wettability, and cuticle damage in refugial populations of Fraser fir"
Shannon C. K. Straub, Cornell University, Department of Plant Biology and L.H. Bailey Hortorium (Supervisor: Jeff J. Doyle) "Systematics of Amorpha L. (Fabaceae): phylogenetics, evolution, ecology, and conservation"
Ping Zhou, Duke University, Department of Biology (Supervisor: Jonathan Shaw) "Evolutionary history and causation of Sphagnum cribrosum "wave form" in North Carolina "
The BSA and the Developmental & Structural section are pleased to announce the 2005 "<st2:sn w:st="on">VERNON</st2:sn><st2:sn w:st="on"> I.</st2:sn> CHEADLE STUDENT TRAVEL AWARD"
Erin Bissell University of Colorado, Ecology and Evolutionary Biology
Erika Edwards Yale University
Anna Jacobsen Michigan State University, Department of Plant Biology
Cassandra Rogers Southern Illinois University, Department of Plant Biology
Phycological Section Student Travel Award
Kevin Kocot Illinois State University "Ultrastructure and Morphology of Development in the Charophycean Green Alga Chaetosphaeridium (Coleochaetales)"
Pteridological Section Student Travel Awards
2005 Award International University, Advisor: Steven F. Oberbauer "Biomechanics of Equisetum giganteum L. in the Atacama Desert and northwestern Argentina" and "Ecophysiology of Equisetum giganteum in the Atacama Desert, northern Chile"
Shane Shaw Miami University, Advisor: R. James Hickey "Natural History of the Puerto Rican soral cryptic Lepidopteran"
Susan T. Klimas University of Colorado, Advisor: Thomas Ranker "Phylogenetic relationships and ecology of the tree fern genus Sphaeropteris"
James E. Watkins University of Florida , Advisors: Steven Mulkey and Michelle Mack "Stress physiology of fern gametophytes: consequences for distribution and abundance"
Letters
In response to Scott Russell's article on AJB Open access... (PSB 51(2):47) Douglas Darnowski wrote:
I liked your article in PSB on open access. I think that BSA should keep its current policies.
Varmus' original statements were foolishly irresponsible at best, for most journals—just what happens when sucessful scientists go outside their own limited field of scientific research (Pauling, Watson, you name `em, they generally say and do poorly thought-out things).
If the government wants to pay for AJB, that would be a different matter, if of course BSA voted to allow it. But then, flying pigs are still fairly rare.
Scott Russell's reply:
Thanks for your comments. One reason that I wanted to discuss Open Access (note capitalization) is that it, like mom and apple pie are difficult to oppose in some form without more information. What has become OA is not merely ability of all scientists to download information for free (which AJB has managed to do with older content), but a dramatic shifting of the information and revenue stream that decreases the number of payers and increases the number of players. That is a difficult market when the payers are scientists and grants are getting larger, but number funded are getting smaller. Scientists don't buy journal subscriptions, so if the journal is essential to their work, price is not a direct concern compared to the ideal of being able to have access to high impact journals. The commercial publishers realize that researchers are not going to pay en masse for what they could have for free, or fire a graduate assistant so they can publish more papers this year. For all that Springer has done, they hold free submission as a very high ideal. Germany does not permit payment of page charges on grants and they support their scientists in this practice. Charging what the market can bear is the tricky part and only in the marketplace do we find out how much the market can bear. It is a complicated situation and non-profits have too small a cash reserve to make mistakes! Thanks again.
LETTER TO: William M. Dahl, Executive Director, Botanical Society of America
Dear Bill,
At the close of the Cornell University College of Agriculture and Life Sciences' Centennial celebrations, we offer a grateful Thank-You to you and the Botanical Society of America for your time and contributions towards making it a most successful year. We are especially appreciative of the BSA Historical Sections generous sponsorship of the sessions on the Legacy of Liberty Hyde Bailey, presented at the Agricultural History Symposium, which was held at Cornell as part of our Centennial tribute.
Best wishes,
Lee B. Kass
for the CALS Centennial Committee
In Memoriam:
Zane B. Carothers - 1924-2005
Zane B. Carothers, Professor Emeritus of Plant Biology at the University of Illinois , died on 3 Feb 2005. He was 80 years old.
Zane was born in 1924 in Philadelphia . After serving in the U.S. Army Air Force during World War II, Zane received his BS and MS degrees in education from Temple University and his PhD in botany from the University ofMichigan with his doctoral dissertation on "Comparative stem anatomy of some shrubby members of the Geraniaceae." He taught at the University of Kentucky from 1957-1959 and the University of Illinois from 1959-1991. He was Professor of Botany or Plant Biology from 1976-1991 and became Professor Emeritus of Plant Biology at his retirement in August 1991
At Illinois, Zane guided six masters (including Robert C. Scott III, Kathie Gilmore, Stephen Wolniak, and Beverly Williams) and six doctoral students (James Seago, Gerald Kreitner, John Moser, Dorothy Zinsmeister, David Haas, and Robert Robbins), and he served on dozens of doctoral committees. After his last doctoral students, he also hosted postdoctoral and senior collaborators: Roy Brown, Ann E. Rushing, and Karen S. Renzaglia.
Zane influenced many students with his courses in classical plant anatomy and morphology. He was very well known for his teaching because his classes were punctuated by his utterly careful preparations and by his dynamic teaching style and use of his voice. He was especially adept at changing the tone of his voice in order to emphasize points. He had a major impact on the teaching styles of many students who passed through his classes. His precise illustrations of plant anatomy provided a key to understanding complex topics and have been fondly used by many former students. Zane was a very much sought after reviewer by botanical journals (especially AJB) because he was so careful, thorough, and constructive in his criticisms and so knowledgeable of the literature.
His research covered the spectrum from stems and roots to bryophytes, which were the major emphases of his life's work. On the root/stem side of his work, the paper he coauthored with David Haas on maize root endodermis development (Haas' dissertation) is still a much cited paper. Zane was well known among bryologists for his meticulous interpretations of electron micrographs and reconstructions of bryophyte spermatids. He authored or coauthored 34 papers on the topic, including several major review articles.
Zane's avocation was submarines. He was a life member of the Navel Institute and Submarine Veterans Inc. and an associate member of the U.S. Submarine Veterans of World War II for which he served as president of the Wolf Pack chapter.
In his honor, the Zane B. Carothers Memorial Fund has been established at the Montgomery Botanical Center in Coral Gables, Florida. The Montgomery Botanical Center is dedicated to research and conservation of cycads and palms. Zane loved all plants but was particularly fascinated by the large sperm of cycads. For more information about this fund, contact Ann_Rushing@baylor.edu.
_ Ann E. Rushing, Department of Biology, Baylor University, Waco, TX 76798 and James L. Seago Jr., Department of Biology, SUNY Oswego, Oswego, NY 13126.
Vincent Ray Franceschi 1953-2005
Vincent Ray Franceschi, Director of the School of Biological Sciences, and the Electron Microscopy Center, Washington State University, died unexpectedly on Saturday at Pullman Regional Hospital , Pullman, Washington.
Vince was born on March 1, 1953, in Napa,California . He was the son of Giuseppe and Rita Bertolucci Franceschi. While Rita was on a visit to Tuscany, Italy, she met and married Guiseppe. Later, he immigrated to Napa , California, Rita's home town. He worked as a shoemaker, and she as a seamstress as they raised their three children, Joe, Vince and Angela. Vince attended Napa High School and later, NapaJunior College .
Vince graduated from the University of California, SantaBarbara, in 1976, obtained an MS from Iowa State University in 1978, and earned a doctorate in Botany from the University of California, Davis , in 1981.
Over the course of his career, Vince received many honors, all well-deserved. While still a student, he became a member of Phi Beta Kappa Honor Society, and was named a Regents Fellow at the University of California, Davis. He received a Lady Davis Fellowship from Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1981. Vince was the recipient of the WSU College of Sciences Distinguished Faculty Research Award in 2004. Also in 2004, he was included on the ISI list of researchers Most Highly Cited in Animal and Plant Sciences, a distinction based on the high-profile nature of his over 150 publications.
In 1982, following a year of postdoctoral study at E.I. duPont de Nemours and Company, Wilmington , Delaware, Vince accepted a position at WSU in the Department of Botany. He rose to the rank of Full Professor in 1992 and assumed the Directorship of the WSU Electron Microscopy Center two years later, a position he still held at his death. The Department of Botany, along with several other departments, was reorganized into the School of Biological Sciences in 1999.
Despite the intensity of his research and instructional load, Vince volunteered in 2001 to assume the Director's position for the School, a multi-campus academic unit with more than 35 faculty, 60 graduate students and a burgeoning undergraduate program. Through his stewardship, the School moved forward with the successful addition of new faculty, reassessment of its undergraduate course offerings and a sharper image of its future. Vince instinctively understood the needs and aspirations of each faculty member in the unit and worked in a collegial manner to form faculty consensus and shape the school's future. His rapport with and support for the School's staff was truly extraordinary. In these four years, he provided perhaps his finest service to his colleagues, his university and his profession.
Vince dedicated his life to plant science, focusing on the relationship between plant structure and functions. Over 27 years, he studied cellular and biochemical mechanisms controlling carbon assimilation, transport, and partitioning of substances (sucrose, nucleic acids and proteins) in plants. He demonstrated how vitamin C is transported in plants, which could lead to improvement of the nutritional value of food. He also recently contributed to the discovery of a previously unknown form of photosynthesis in plants. Since it is a very novel structural variant of the most efficient pathway by which some plants perform photosynthesis, there is interest in exploiting this discovery towards the development of crops to withstand adverse conditions like heat and drought, and rising carbon dioxide concentrations in the atmosphere. Throughout his career, Vince studied calcium oxalate in plants, which is important in regulating calcium levels, and in plant defense against herbivores. He had another project, working with colleagues in Norway, in which he identified mechanisms used by conifers in defense against bark beetle attack, a major problem in the forest industry. Vince had an extraordinary record of collaborative research, which included scientists all over WSU and at many universities across the U.S. and world wide, including Texas, California , Argentina, Korea, Australia , India, Germany, Russia , Iran, and Israel. He was very skillful in procuring grant funds for his research program, and he obtained millions of dollars to support his projects.
Vince was extraordinarily skillful in microscopy, using various methods to examine and photograph the innermost workings of plants. His wonderful micrographs have graced many prominent scientific journals, including the cover of Science magazine.
Vince's research is known by plant scientists world wide through his many publications and through his membership in the American Society of Plant Biologists and the Botanical Society of America. More information about his life's work can be found on his website: http://www.sci.wsu.edu/sbs/franceschi.
In addition to being a dedicated leader and a premier scientist, Vince was respected as a teacher. For many years, he taught Plant Anatomy and courses in Electron Microscopy Technique. Vince was advisor to many graduate students and mentor to many visiting scientists in his laboratory and the EM Center. He was exceptionally generous with his time in teaching techniques and cell biology to any student or researcher who sought his help.
Vince was also a Science Fiction enthusiast. In his spare time, he loved gardening. He waged a never-ending battle against the squirrels. In this, he was aided by his faithful cat, Buddy.
Vince is survived by his fiancée, Mechthild Tegeder, and his parents, Rita and Guiseppe, to whom he was a very caring son. He is also survived by his brother Joseph, his wife Patricia and their son Anthony, of SaltLake City, Utah, and by his sister Angela Worden and her husband Chris of Omond Beach, Florida, and their daughter Gina, of Weaverville , California. Vince leaves behind many members of his extended family in the Napa , California, area and in Italy, and his many, many friends and colleagues at WSU and universities across the United States and in a number of foreign countries.
Those who knew Vince will remember him as a kind, friendly person with a keen scientific mind and a devotion to his profession. He had excellent communication skills and fostered an "open door" policy when it came to encouraging interaction with faculty, staff and students. He was a prolific scientist whose legacy of work will go on through all his publications, through his influence on colleagues, and through the careers of the many students he mentored. He will be greatly missed, and impossible to replace.
A memorial service to celebrate Vince's life is planned for 3 p.m. on Friday, May 6, at the Presbyterian Church, 1630 NE Stadium Way, Pullman, Washington. The Rev. Roger Lynn will officiate. Immediately following the service, Vince's friends and colleagues are invited to an informal reception at 240 SW Blaine St., Pullman . The family suggests that, in lieu of flowers, memorials may be made to the Vince Franceschi Scholarship Fund, through the Washington State Employees Credit Union, Pullman Branch, 1220 S. Grand Ave., Pullman WA 99163 . - Gary Edwards, Washing St. University.
Personalia
Guggenheim Award Supports Michael J. Balick's Ethnobotanical Study of Pohnpei, Federated States of Micronesia
On May 4, 2005, the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation held a reception to honor their new 2005 Guggenheim Fellows. Among the new fellows is Dr. Michael J. Balick of The New York Botanical Garden, whose fellowship will support the preparation of a comprehensive manuscript on the ethnobotany of the Micronesian island of Pohnpei.
Working with local ethnobotanists, the Pohnpei Council of Traditional Leaders, The Nature Conservancy, The College of Micronesia, and other international and local groups, Dr. Balick has been documenting people's traditional uses of plants on the island for eight years. This data will be compiled into a complete synthesis of ethnobotanical knowledge of Pohnpei. The Guggenheim award will enable Dr. Balick to produce a first draft of this manuscript in 2006, for publication in 2007.
Pohnpei, the highest and second largest of the Caroline Islands in the western Pacific, is part of the Federated States of Micronesia. It is one of the wettest and, until recently, most fully forested of the CarolineIslands. It contains the lowest elevation cloud forest in the world and is rich in rare and endemic species of plants and animals. The diversity of habitats, high rainfall, and deep weathered soils support more than 1,000 species of vascular plants.
Since the first botanist visited in 1822, botanical and ethnobotanical information gathering on Pohnpei has been uncoordinated and sporadic. Today, as in other parts of the world, much of traditional knowledge, including an understanding of biodiversity, and its use and management, is being lost as modern culture spreads around the world.
The book will contain introductory chapters on the botany of the island, agroforestry and food production, traditional forest management practices, traditional healing, ecosystem conservation, and the loss of specific knowledge about plants and their uses. This will be followed by an encyclopedic section on Ponapean flora, with detailed scientific nomenclature, common names, local and regional uses, and color photography. The book is planned to be the most detailed study of the traditional use of plants on any Micronesian island. It will support biodiversity research, conservation, and anthropological studies and be
used in public health programs and local teaching. It will also help safeguard the intellectual property interests of the Pohnpei people.
Dr. Michael J. Balick is a senior scientist, curator, and research director at The New York Botanical Garden. He is the Philecology Curator and Director of the Botanical Garden's Institute of Economic Botany and Vice President for Research and Training. He is the author of numerous books and scientific papers in ethnobotany and plant systematics, and serves as an advisor and trustee on the board of a number of organizations dedicated to ethnobotany and herbal medicine. Dr. Balick serves as an Adjunct Professor at Columbia University, New York University, Yale University , and City University of New York. Internationally, he has established numerous collaborations between communities, governmental and non-governmental organizations, and institutions in the United States and Europe, all working towards the common theme of discovering plants with potential therapeutic uses and was recently awarded the Award for International Scientific Cooperation by the American Association for the Advancement of Science.
A Symposium and Banquet Honoring the Legacy of David E. Fairbrothers
"The Future of Plant Research" at Rutgers University, NJ, USA June 4, 2005
This event was organized to honor David Fairbrothers' work during his 40+ years career at RutgersUniversity as a researcher, academic advisor, teacher, administrator, and colleague. David Fairbrothers' historic influence over plant research, conservation of plants on both a local and nationwide scale, as well as protection of habitats in the NJ Pinelands cannot be overestimated. He was honored by former students, colleagues and his friends in a Mini-Symposium discussing his influence over plant research and conservation in the UnitedStates, with personal anecdotes from students and colleagues, and presentations of current cutting-edge plant research at Rutgers. This was also the kick-off for the fundraising campaign for the David E. Fairbrothers Plant Resources Center (FPRC), an umbrella organization envisioned to consist of the Chrysler Herbarium, the Rutgers' Mycological Herbarium, Online Herbarium, Molecular and Plant Extract Archive and a K-12 Stakeholder outreach program. The endowment for the FPRC would secure funding for staff and activities that would benefit both New Jersey plant and citizens, as well as nationwide plant research.
Speakers for Mini-Symposium:
Richard Triemer, Michigan State University
Ilya Raskin, Rutgers University
Steven Handel, Rutgers University
David Lee, Florida International University
Jim White, Rutgers University
Steven Clements, Brooklyn Botanic Garden
Dennis Stevenson, The New York Botanical Garden
Art Tucker, Delaware State University
Lena Struwe, Rutgers University
To contribute to the endowment for the Rutgers herbarium contact:
Chrysler Herbarium: Lena Struwe, Director, Chrysler Herbarium, Rutgers University (Phone: 732-932 9711 x235, struwe@aesop.rutgers.edu)
Mycological Herbarium: Jim White, RutgersUniversity (Phone Number: 732-932 9711 x357, jwhite@aesop.rutgers.edu )
Brooklyn-Botanic Garden Names Scot D. Medbury President, CEO
BROOKLYN , NY, July 28, 2005 Scot D. Medbury has been named president and chief executive officer of Brooklyn Botanic Garden . Mr. Medbury, 46, will officially assume his new position at Brooklyn Botanic Garden October 3, 2005, becoming the sixth leader since the Garden was founded in 1910. Prior to joining Brooklyn Botanic Garden , Mr. Medbury was the director of the San Francisco Conservatory of Flowers a San Francisco landmark since 1878 and the Botanical Garden at Strybing Arboretum, Golden Gate Park . Since 1999, he has been the chief administrative officer for the 55-acre botanical garden as well as for the 125-year-old conservatory, which re-opened in 2003 after a $25 million building restoration and exhibitions upgrade that transformed it into Golden GatePark 's star attraction. Mr. Medbury was also highly successful in creating programming that appealed to San Francisco 's diverse audiences and increased their use and enjoyment of the garden.
Throughout Mr. Medbury's distinguished 25-year career he has been involved in the curation, cultivation, and interpretation of botanical collections, having held appointments at gardens in California, Washington state, Great Britain, New Zealand, and his home state of Hawaii. Mr. Medbury's knowledge of the horticultural, ecological, and design characteristics of temperate, subtropical, and tropical plants has helped to inform the planning and management of many botanical gardens.
"I am absolutely thrilled to accept the opportunity to help lead this extraordinary cultural institution and to lend my enthusiasm and commitment to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden 's local and far-reaching constituencies," said Scot D. Medbury, president-elect. "Together we can further the Garden's outstanding reputation both as a world-class garden and as a leader in botanical and conservation research and education, which are an inspiration to botanical gardens everywhere."
Mr. Medbury is affiliated with many professional associations including the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta (AABGA), where he has served on the Publications Committee since 1990, Board of Directors from 2001 to 2004, and its Conservation Committee from 1992 to 1996. He is also a member of the governing councils of the California Horticultural Society and the International Dendrology Society, and is a member-at-large of the Garden Club of America. Among his many awards, Mr. Medbury received the professional citation from the American Association of Botanical Gardens and Arboreta in 2004 for his contributions to public gardens in North America.
Mr. Medbury holds two degrees from the University of Washington in Seattle: an MS in Forest Resources from Center for Urban Horticulture; and, a BA in International Studies, with an emphasis on Russian language and culture, Phi Beta Kappa, from the HenryM. JacksonSchool of International Studies.
M. Patrick Griffith Appointed Executive Director of Montgomery Botanical Center
Miami, Florida: June 23, 2005:
Botanist M. Patrick Griffith was recently selected by Montgomery Botanical Center as its new Executive Director. Patrick is a recent Ph.D. graduate in Botany from Claremont Graduate University and Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont, California, and also holds M.S. (Biology, Sul Ross State University) and B.A. (Botany, UT Austin) degrees. Patrick is the author of numerous scientific articles and other publications, and has received various grants and awards for his studies of plant evolution and relationships. His past experience includes extensive botanical fieldwork, both within the US and abroad.
Montgomery Botanical Center is situated on the former 122- acre Coral Gables, Florida estate of Colonel Robert and Nell Montgomery. This botanical resource specializes in scientifically documented, population-based collections of tropical plants, with an emphasis on palms and cycads. "Our rigorous standards in population sampling, data collection, permitting, and collections management have earned the respect of botanical institutions, researchers, and educators from around the world," Patrick states. The local community also benefits by learning about these plants and their landscape potential in South Florida by seeing them displayed in a beautiful, professionally-designed garden setting. Working in close collaboration with the Florida Nursery, Growers & Landscape Association (FNGLA), MBC operates the largest seed bank in the world, providing other research institutions, gardens, and the nursery industry with seeds, pollen, and plants.
Under Patrick's leadership, Montgomery will continue to expand its scientific collections of tropical plants (emphasizing palms and cycads) in its botanical garden, and further exemplify outstanding landscape design. Patrick is committed to expanding and strengthening MBC's relationships with scientists, researchers, horticulturalists, and botanical institutions around the world. As such, Patrick invites all interested persons to contact him at their convenience
(grif@montgomerybotanical.org ).
Award Opportunities
<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> Harvard<b style="mso-bidi-font-weight: normal;"> University Bullard Fellowships in Forest Research
Each year Harvard University awards a limited number of Bullard Fellowships to individuals in biological, social, physical and political sciences to promote advanced study, research or integration of subjects pertaining to forested ecosystems. The fellowships, which include stipends up to $40,000, are intended to provide individuals in mid-career with an opportunity to utilize the resources and to interact with personnel in any department within Harvard University in order to develop their own scientific and professional growth. In recent years Bullard Fellows have been associated with the Harvard Forest , Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and the J. F. Kennedy School of Government and have worked in areas of ecology, forest management, policy and conservation. Fellowships are available for periods ranging from six months to one year after September 1st. Applications from international scientists, women and minorities are encouraged. Fellowships are not intended for graduate students or recent post-doctoral candidates. Information and application instructions are available on the Harvard Forest web site (http://harvardforest.fas.harvard.edu). For additional information contact: Committee on the Charles Bullard Fund for Forest Research, Harvard University, Harvard Forest, 324 North Main Street, Petersham, MA 01366 USA or email (hfapps@fas.harvard.edu ). Annual deadline for applications is February 1st.
American Philosophical Society Grant and Fellowship Programs.
We have revised the Fellowships and Research Grants section of our website, www.amphilsoc.org , for 2006, and we hope to institute a listserv where you can register to receive brief reminders of deadlines and of our yearly update of the forms; the launch of the listserv will be announced on our website so we invite you to check the "About the Fellowships and Research Grants" section periodically.
New this year:
1. The American Philosophical Society is proud to announce the addition of the Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research to our list of programs. The Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research offers grants, primarily designed for young scholars, to support the cost of travel and equipment in field research.
2. It is now possible to submit applications electronically to the Franklin and Lewis and Clark programs using fill-in versions of the forms.
3. In collaboration with the British Academy, the APS offers an exchange post-doctoral fellowship for up to three months' research in the archives and libraries of London during 2006. Those interested in applying for this program should use the Franklin application form, specifying the British Academy Fellowship, and apply by October 1.
A very brief overview of the Franklin and Lewis and Clark programs is below my signature. Please feel free to edit the information as your space allotment and the interests of your readership dictate. The single most important detail to convey is the web site address because all current forms and updates are available there. If you feel that your readership needs to know that our grants are not restricted to philosophy, refer them to the section "About the APS."
American Philosophical Society, RESEARCH PROGRAMS
All information and forms for all of the Society's programs can be downloaded from our website, http:// www.amphilsoc.org . Click on the "Fellowships and Research Grants" tab at the top of the homepage.
INFORMATION about ALL PROGRAMS
Purpose, scope
Awards are made for non-commercial research only. The Society makes no grants for academic study or classroom presentation, for travel to conferences, for non-scholarly projects, for assistance with translation, or for the preparation of materials for use by students. The Society does not pay overhead or indirect costs to any institution or costs of publication.
Eligibility
Applicants may be residents of the United States, or American citizens resident abroad. Foreign nationals whose research can only be carried out in the United States are eligible. Grants are made to individuals; institutions are not eligible to apply. Requirements for each program vary.
Tax information
Grants and fellowships are taxable income, but the Society is not required to report payments. It is recommended that grant and fellowship recipients discuss their reporting obligations with their tax advisors.
Contact information
Questions concerning the FRANKLIN and LEWIS AND CLARK programs should be directed to Linda Musumeci, Research Administrator, at LMusumeci@amphilsoc.org or 215-440-3429.
INDIVIDUAL PROGRAMS
Franklin Research Grants
Scope
This is a program of small grants to scholars
intended to support the cost of research leading to publication in all areas of knowledge. The Franklin program is particularly designed to help meet the cost of travel to libraries and archives for research purposes; the purchase of microfilm, photocopies or equivalent research materials; the costs associated with fieldwork; or laboratory research expenses.
Eligibility
Applicants are expected to have a doctorate, or to have published work of doctoral character and quality. Pre-doctoral graduate students are not eligible, but the Society is especially interested in supporting the work of young scholars who have recently received the doctorate.
Award
From $1,000 to $6,000.
Deadlines
October 1, December 1; notification in February and April.
Lewis and Clark Fund for Exploration and Field Research
Scope
The Lewis and Clark encourages exploratory field studies for the collection of specimens and data and to provide the imaginative stimulus that accompanies direct observation. Applications are invited from disciplines with a large dependence on field studies, such as archeology, anthropology, astrobiology and space science, biology, ecology, geography, geology, and paleontology, but grants will not be restricted to these fields.
Eligibility
Grants will be available to graduate students, post-doctoral students, and junior and senior scientists who wish to participate in field studies for their theses or for other purposes. Undergraduates are not eligible.
Award
Grants will depend on travel costs, but will ordinarily be in the range of several hundred dollars to about $5,000.
Deadline
March 15; notification in June.
Other News
Evidence of Integrated Signaling in Plants Reported at the First Symposium on Plant Neurobiology
June 21, 2005—Science is showing that plants are capable of accumulating, processing, storing, and transmitting information. Plants contain nervous-system-like receptors and neuroactive compounds, similar to those found in animals. These advances in understanding the "neuronal" aspects of plant life may dramatically change our understanding of how plants grow, as well as how plants interact with other organisms, a field of science sometimes referred to as plant neurobiology.
At the world's first Symposium on Plant Neurobiology, recently held in Florence, Italy, May 17-20, 2005, Dr. Eric D. Brenner, curator at The New York Botanical Garden, presented recent findings on pharmacological approaches to understanding plant glutamate receptors. It was one of a number of scientific papers that were presented on molecular biology, cell biology, plant physiology, electrophysiology, and plant-to-plant communications.
Plants produce a variety of compounds that affect the human nervous system. Although their effects on humans have been well studied, their role in plants is poorly understood. One such compound, BMAA [S(+)-beta-Methyl-alpha, beta-diaminopropionic acid], is found in all species of the most ancient, living seed plants, the cycads, which once covered large portions of the earth nearly 200 to 300 million years ago . BMAA in cycad seeds, among a number of candidate compounds has been suggested as the etiological source of Guam 's dementia (also known as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis/parkinsonism-dementia complex, or ALS-PDC)—a disease in the South Pacific. Now research is uncovering BMAA's role in plants.
Dr. Brenner with Dr. Dennis Stevenson and their colleagues from The New York Botanical Garden and the Department of Biology at New York University took a pharmacological approach to uncover the role of plant glutamate receptor genes by examining the effects of BMAA, derived from cycads, on morphogenesis in the model study plant, Arabidopsis thaliana. Their studies presented at the meeting, and their previously published work in Plant Physiology (December 2000), revealed that BMAA appears to interfere with light-induced changes in morphology in Arabidopsis. These studies suggest a role for glutamate receptor involvement in light signaling in plants. Thus, BMAA made by cycads, which acts on glutamate receptors, appears to be acting against animal predators. Glutamate receptor genes have been identified in Arabidopsis, and the genomic sequencing of cycad genes performed by Dr. Brenner and his colleagues at the New York Plant Genomics Consortium, has uncovered glutamate receptor like genes in cycads, published in Genome Biology (2003).
Further studies on glutamate receptors and their impact on plant growth and development, including circadian cycles (biorhythms) of plants, are underway. Dr. Brenner also previewed further research on BMAA light signaling and light pathways in plants. There's mounting evidence that a new era of plant studies is emerging, the era of plant neurobiology.
The collection of scientists from diverse backgrounds at the Symposium on Plant Neurobiology is one signal of this new era, as is the announcement at the symposium of a new journal, Plant Signaling and Behavior, to be launched this fall. For more information on the symposium, see its Web site at http://izmb.de/volkmann/plantneuro.php.
The New York Plant Consortium was formed in 2000 to pool the abilities and resources of four of New York's top science institutions—New York University, The New York Botanical Garden, The American Museum of Natural History, and Cold Spring Harbor. Together, the institutions are pursuing research in comparative functional genomics in plants. In September 2004, the consortium received a $5 million grant from the National Science Foundation to create a virtual center for plant evolutionary genomics.
The New York Botanical Garden is a museum of plants located at Bronx River Parkway (Exit 7W) and Fordham Road in the Bronx . The Botanical Garden is dedicated to the documentation and preservation of the Earth's plant biodiversity through education and research. Its International Plant Science Center is one of the most accomplished, intensive, and distinguished botanical science programs in the world. The Garden is open year-round, Tuesday through Sunday and on Monday holidays, from 10 a.m._6 p.m. April through October, and 10 a.m._5 p.m. November through March. For information call 718.817.8700 or visit www.nybg.org.
Revised New York Flora Atlas
The NY Natural Heritage Program and New York Flora Association are pleased to unveil the revised online New York Flora Atlas. This online atlas may be accessed via the following URL: http://atlas.nyflora.org/. Through this atlas users can generate county checklists, learn which plants are rare, develop wetland lists, and create native/non-native list. Each species has information on the distribution, rarity, native status, and wetland status, as well as a list of synonyms. We will soon add habitat descriptions and associated ecological communities. By the end of summer, we also hope to add non-vascular plant information. More than 200 vascular species were added to the New York State flora, mainly through the discovery of unreported voucher specimens. The taxonomy of many species has also been updated, however, the database is cross-referenced with a long list of synonyms. There are also direct links to the USDA Plants Database and to NatureServe Explorer for each databased species.
All county records are tied to a voucher specimen. To assist people in obtaining more information about a particular record, the herbarium holding the voucher specimen can be found under the source tab. As a word of caution, all identifications have been accepted as is. The distribution record is only as good as the identification of the voucher records. Identification errors are obviously present within these voucher records; however, researchers can track down the specimen and annotate any questionable reports. This atlas will receive continual updates to reflect the most accurate information possible.
This project is only possible though the support of the various herbaria that have provided digital data. This atlas is built on existing digital data and many unrecorded voucher specimens still need to be added to the database. As more and more herbaria digitize their collections, the more improvement users will see with the atlas. All herbaria are welcomed to contribute their data. Data from nearly 60 herbaria have been contributed to date, but special thanks go to the Brooklyn Botanic Garden, New York State Museum, Planting Fields Arboretum, New York Botanical Garden, SUNY-Oswego (Rice Creek Field Station), University of Connecticut, and Bucknell University for the significant amount of data provided. We also want to thank Ken Dean and Dick Mitchell for their work on the 1990 NYFA Atlas as the current atlas is largely based on this work. We also thank Dick Mitchell for all the work he did as State Botanist, and we hope this work represents a continuation of his great works. Many thanks to the numerous collectors who have provided the voucher
specimens that this atlas is based on. Lastly, we thank Shawn Landry and Logan Mabe (University of South Florida) for developing and designing the atlas database/website, as well as Dave Gerhard and Chris Isaksen ( New York State Museum) for supporting, trouble-shooting, and maintaining the atlas database server/website.
Funding for the project came from the Environmental Protection Fund through the New York State Biodiversity Research Institute, and from the members of the New York Flora Association.
Troy Weldy and David Werier
For additiona information contact:
Troy Weldy Botanist
NY Natural Heritage Program
625 Broadway, 5th Floor
Albany, NY 12233-4757
Phone: (518) 402-8952
Cell: (518) 810-1853
Fax: (518) 402-8925
The NY Natural Heritage Program is a partnership between The Nature Conservancy and the New York State Dept. of Environmental Conservation.
Visit our website at www.nynhp.org
continued from p. 82
2
In the ages,
Called Cretaceous,
Dripping from the bark of pine
Catching gnats, bugs
And mosquitoes,
Grew some sticky turpentine.
Chorus
3
Buried up for
Countless ages
In the seas and mud and slime:
Then washed up
Upon the seashore
Comes our fossil turpentine.
Chorus
Oh my solid,
Oh my golden
Oh my amber turpentine !
Put you in my
Lady's necklace
Then you'll be both hers and mine.
H.S. Conard, 1910
Grinnell College
in : Songs of Biology, 4th ed. 1953
Books Reviewed
Ecological
Sierra Nevada Natural History, Revised Edition . Storer, Tracy I., Robert L. Ysinger, and David Lukas. - Jan Barber................................................95
Deserts: The Living Drylands . Oldfield, Sara. - Gretchen North.........................................................................96
What Good are Bugs? Insects in the Web of Life . Waldbauer, G. - Scott Ruhren............................................97
Economic Botany
The Book of Edible Nuts . Rosengarten, Frederic, Jr. -Nina Baghai-Riding...........................................................98
Creative Propagation, 2nd ed . Thompson, Peter. - Douglas Darnowski............................................................100
Herbs in Bloom. A Guide to Growing Herbs as Ornamental Plants . Dougherty, Holly S.- Tadeusz Aniszewski.........................................................101
Hibiscus: Hardy and Tropical Plants for the Garden . Lawton, Barbara Perry. - Randall Small......................103
Timber Press Pocket Guide to Shade Perennials . Schmid, W. George. - Jason Koontz...................................103
Historical
Linnaeus' Philosophia Botanica . Freer, Stephen (Translator). -Marshall Sundberg..........................................104
Mycological
Biodiversity of Fungi, Inventory and Monitoring Methods . Mueller, Gregory M., Gerald F. Bills, and Mercedes S. Foster. - Darlene Southworth...........106
Physiological
Vitamin C: Function and Biochemistry in Animals and Plants . Asard, Han, James M. May and Nicholas Smirnoff (eds ) - Susan Jonew-Held.............107
Pteridological
A Natural History of Ferns . Moran, Robbin C. - Courtney C. Finch.................................................................108
Structural and Developmental
Deep Morphology: Toward a Renaissance of Morphology in Plant Systematics . Stuessy, Tod F., Veronika Mayer & Elvira Horandl ( eds).
- Marshall Sundberg………………………………………................................................................109
Systematic
Cacti of the Trans-Pecos and Adjacent Areas . Powell, A. Michael and James F. Weedin. - Root Gorelick....110
The Moss Flora of Britain and Ireland , 2nd ed . Smith, A.J.E. - Norton Miller...............................................112
Sierra Nevada Natural History, Revised Edition. Storer, Tracy I., Robert L. Usinger, and David Lukas. 2004. ISBN 0-520-24096-0 (Paper US$ 24.95) 592 pp University of California Press, 2120 Berkeley Way, Berkeley, CA 94704.This volume is no. 73 in the California Natural History Guide Series published by the University ofCalifornia Press. It is a revised edition of the 1963 guide by the first two authors, and contains a new introduction, updated treatments, and a set of beautiful color plates illustrating the plants and animals of the Sierra. The introductory chapter includes sections on topography and geological history, climate, and distribution patterns of the range's extraordinarily diverse biota. A section titled "The Changing Landscape" details the immense impact that humans have had in the region. Virtually all of these impacts occurred after the gold rush of 1849. Although local Native American tribes used fire to control brushlands and encourage the growth of various food plants, their populations were never large enough to effect change at the enormous scale of white settlers.
The bulk of the book consists of the descriptions and illustrations of Sierran plants and animals. There is some attempt to follow current taxonomic knowledge, while at the same time producing a guide that will undoubtedly be used mostly by people without technical training. This is a clearly a difficult balance to achieve. For example, fungi are treated in the plant section, despite current evidence that they are more closely related to animals. Angiosperms are divided into "flowering plants", shrubs and trees, which is likely how most non-botanists categorize plants. The "flowering plant" section is ordered alphabetically by family name, although the index to the section uses the common family name. No key is included and I can't help but wonder whether your average layman would know the difference between a plant belonging to the waterleaf family and one from "Loasa." As I said: a difficult balance, and these are surely not the last authors to struggle with how best to arrange taxonomic groups in a popular guide. A rudimentary description of floral parts is provided, and each plant family begins with a brief description of family characteristics. As a botanist, I spent most of my time looking at the plant sections, but all the chapters are subject to the same problem of organization. It's difficult to see how an amateur naturalist would find what he was looking for without at least some taxonomic training. Presumably, there would be a lot of flipping back and forth between the color plates and the descriptions. This is, of course, a problem common to anyone who wants to produce a popular guide; I certainly don't have a solution.
There are many fine line drawings in the text, but the glory of the book is the 536 color plates. In terms of utility for identification purposes, these range from excellent to useless; most fall between these extremes. Photos of most mammals and many of the birds will be of aid. As the number of species in a group increases (e.g. insects, plants), the utility of the photos begins to decrease. Of the insect photos, those of butterflies are most useful. Most of the plant photos will, at best, get you to genus, certainly as good as may be hoped for without a key. A few _ plates 57 (grass) and 58 (sedge) _ might as well have been left out entirely. Nevertheless, for a guide so ambitious as to take on the entire biota of such a large and diverse region, I think this volume does an admirable job. I do wish that the plates were cross-referenced to the descriptions; this would cut down considerably on the need to flip back and forth between photo, index and text. Species descriptions are generally good, and often include distribution notes and interesting remarks about the species' habits, behavior and ecology. The plant descriptions, however, lack bloom periods.
The book itself is handsomely made, with a reasonably sturdy paper cover and photographs and drawings of very good quality. Inside the front cover is a handy scale, calibrated in inches. A nice set of references, arranged by topic (general, geology) or group, is included for those who wish to investigate further. The size and weight of the volume are perfect for car camping and day hikes, but probably too bulky for a backpack of more than 4 or 5 days. In summary, I think that anyone desiring an overall introduction to the natural history of California's beautiful Sierra Nevada will find this volume both useful and enjoyable to read. Jan Barber, Department of Biology, St Louis University .
Deserts: The Living Drylands by Sara Oldfield (MIT Press) opens with a photograph on the frontispiece of an arborescent succulent that is identified two pages later as "Joshua Tree." Sadly, the photo is of a quiver tree (an aloe, not a yucca, from an African desert, not American). I say "sadly" because the intention of the book, given its coffee table format, lavish use of color photography, and non-technical prose, is to illuminate deserts and their inhabitants for general readers who may thereby come to value deserts more highly. Moreover, a portion of the proceeds from the book will be donated to the venerable conservation organization Fauna and Flora International in the UK. Thus, it is unfortunate that such a lovely, right-minded book has many small errors and not-so-small omissions that diminish its value for both specialists and general readers alike.
Flaws aside for the moment, the organization and scope of the book are appropriate for its intended audience. The first chapter presents an overview of the world's major deserts, beginning with a short history of their exploration, followed by a discussion of abiotic features common to most deserts, such as limited rainfall, large diurnal fluctuations in temperature, and eroded and shifting soils. Then, the chapter briefly describes the distribution and location of the world's deserts, but without referring to the extremely useful map that is consigned to the back of the book. The introduction concludes with short sections devoted to the subjects to be explored desert-by-desert in the body of the book: plants and animals and their ecological adaptations, the traditional cultures of the indigenous peoples, and changes or threats and conservation measures designed to meet them. After chapters devoted to the deserts of Africa, the Middle East, Asia, Australia, and the Americas, the book concludes with a chapter called "The dryland future," followed by a map of the world's deserts and some useful lists of endangered species and conservation organizations. Throughout, the level of detail presented and the amount of background knowledge assumed seem geared toward a reader with a sound general education. An ideal use for such a book might be to stimulate a motivated high school student to use some information directly (such as the ingenious adaptations of desert amphibians) or to research certain of its subjects more deeply.
A number of errors and editing decisions might cause frustration for the high school student or any reader who wants to know more about deserts. After being alerted to the mistaken caption for the quiver trees, I set out to check captions against photos. While this did not reveal many additional errors, what I found was more bothersome: the photos are not closely matched with the text. Often a statement will cry out for an illustration (e.g., "One of the most extraordinary African desert plants is Harpagophytum or devil's claw"; p.103) yet the photograph accompanying the text is of an aloe. This disconnect between illustration and text may have arisen because the photographs were taken from a collection and do not represent any collaboration between photographer and author. The overall effect is that the book is an assemblage, rather than an integrated work, which might occasionally lead to misunderstanding. For example, a two-page spread showing lions in Gir NationalPark (in India , but not identified as to nation) is placed near the beginning of the account of the Gobi Desert, where a casual reader might be led to believe the lions live.
The high school student or other reader may have additional cause for frustration due to misspelled names and misidentified organisms. My favorite photograph in the book is of a green and yellow chameleon in a hip-hop pose, with tongue out and legs akimbo, yet an Internet search for more information on this creature was fruitless until I realized that the author had misspelled the genus. In addition, every person to whom I have shown this picture has asked where the chameleon lives, but its home desert is not specified. One last small error is one that would annoy even an elementary
school student: the author states that "The formidable scorpions are another group of insects that have adapted to life in the Australian deserts" (p. 103). This may seem trivial, but a book meant to inspire understanding of deserts and their inhabitants owes its readers a baseline of accurate information.
Two omissions further diminish the book, particularly for readers in the Americas . For all continents except the Americas, the cultures of peoples indigenous to desert regions are described in some detail. Even if the indigenous people of deserts in the continental U.S. have been displaced and decimated, surely they deserve mention. The second omission is curious, given the dedication of the book to the cause of conservation: no mention is made of threats to deserts associated with global change, such as likely increases in temperature, shifts in rainfall, increases in nitrogen deposition, and widespread invasions by non-native species. The book does describe desertification, and also does a good job of discussing better ways to manage the competing demands between human uses and conservation of resources in desert lands. However, on balance, this book does not adequately fill the niche of a beautiful yet accurate natural history of deserts. Gretchen North, Biology Department, Occidental College , Los Angeles, CA 90041
What Good are Bugs? Insects in the Web of Life. G. Waldbauer. 2003. ISBN 0-674-01632-7 (Paper US$) 366 pp. Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts. Class after class, field trip after field trip, and gathering after gathering of friends and family, what ecologist, naturalist or biologist has not been asked, "What good are bugs?" This question often comes as the inquiring person is squashing a mosquito or collecting ticks from their clothing. "What good are bugs?" Obviously from the subtitle, bugs have some place in this world. And by bugs, the author means insects and all of their multiple-legged brethren. I use the general, non-technical moniker here as well.
Acknowledging that the world has a love-hate relationship with bugs, Waldbauer effectively and oh so thoroughly reveals how bugs are inextricably woven into the fabric of nature. Consider insects as consumers and the consumed, "…herbivorous insects produced close to thirty times more food for animal-eating creatures than did the much larger and more visible vertebrates." And the bugs that influence other bugs, "without insects there would be no spiders, and without spiders there would probably be too many insects." Or the many easily overlooked bugs going about their daily often overlooked lives, "… fairy flies parasitize the eggs of many different kinds of insects… such as the predaceous diving beetles." Or a PG-rated parasite, "Some species (flies) lodge in the groin of male chipmunks… often sterilize them… aptly named Cuterebra emasculator." The bizarre and the popular are given equal billing. This is a credit to Walbauer's efforts. Readers will be drawn into the limitless world of fascinating facts in an easy to read combination of science and natural history. Chapters are grouped into four broad categories: "Helping Plants," "Helping Animals," "Limiting Population Growth" and "Cleaning Up." The next breakdown is logical: dispersal, pollination, herbivory for example.
There is one niggling comment regarding the format. Peppered randomly throughout each chapter are what amount, I assume, to sidebars or footnotes. Demarcated by three miniature insects, these seem to be a place for embellishment. In fact they distract from the otherwise lucid prose. These do not seem necessary.
Occasionally, I was confused by chapter title similarities. "Supplying Food" is found with the section "Helping Plants" and the similar "Giving Sustenance" begins the second section, "Helping Animals." Both food and sustenance refer to bugs as the item on the menu for plants (ex. carnivorous plants) and animals in the form of many types of insectivorous predators and parasites. True, not an insurmountable problem, but more cogent titles could emphasize the individual importance of topics.
Illustrations, though not copious, are effective and attractive. The pencil drawings are placed within pertinent sections and are accompanied by a short caption. At the end of the book is a list of references divided by chapter. The index is thorough and accurate and contains a combination of subjects, technical and common names and authors.
What Good are Bugs? Insects in the Web of Life is not a textbook but could have a place in the classroom. Walbauer's book could entertain general studies course such as the variations of classes named "Bugs and People" etc. offered at many schools. What Good are Bugs? Insects in the Web of Life is part encyclopedia, part armchair travel guide for a fascinating, important and yes sometimes repulsive and scary group of creatures. The uninitiated novice bug observer should be enthralled by the panoply of the goings on of bugs. The jaded naturalist will still find new reasons to love these multilegged animals.
It is irresistible to not take liberty with E.O. Wilson's view of ants; "bugs" are the little things that rule the earth. They pollinate countless crops used by humans, move and protect many plants, dispose of much of natures rubbish and on and on… Indeed, bugs are good. - Scott Ruhren, Providence College, School of Continuing Education , 549 River Avenue , Providence,Rhode Island 02918-0001 .
The Book of Edible Nuts, Rosengarten, Frederic. Jr. 2004, ISBN 0-486-43499-0 (Paper US $19.95) 384 pp. Dover Publications Inc. 31 East 2nd Street, Mineola , New York 11501 .
People are encouraged to eat five to nine servings of fruits and vegetables a day to reduce risks of cancer and other chronic diseases. There are over 20,000 edible plants in the world, yet many are unknown to individuals. Edible plant parts may include leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, roots, and stems. Seeds are especially nutritious since they contain the embryo and the food supply for the next generation of the plant. They contain large amounts of protein, fats, carbohydrates, and vitamins (calcium, iron, phosphorus, sodium, potassium, niacin, riboflavin, and others). Rosengarten, an economic botanist, discusses 42 different types of "nuts" that are consumed throughout the world in his book entitled "The Book of Edible Nuts". Rosengarten uses the term nut loosely. He does not embrace the botanical definition of a nut which is usually defined as a one-seeded, indehiscent, simple, dry fruit with a hard (stony to woody) pericarp In this book, the word nut encompasses an assortment of cultivated fruits (achenes, drupes and legumes), tubers (chufa nut) and seeds that are called nuts in everyday usage.
This book begins with a short introduction, in which Rosengarten points out that not all nuts and nutlike seeds are edible. For example, the cashew contains deadly toxic and venomous substances in its fruit wall and the calabar bean of Nigeria was used to poison individuals that committed heinous crimes. He emphasizes, however, how nuts and seeds are vital for vegetarians and provide healthful snacks for other individuals. Throughout the introduction Rosengarten specified how nuts can be stored, the U.S. production and consumption of common tree nut varieties, and U.S. dollars price per pound of edible nuts.
The book is divided into two main parts. In part 1, Rosengarten writes individual chapters about 12 economically important, edible nuts that are consumed in the United States: almonds, Brazil nuts, cashews, chestnuts, coconuts, filberts (hazelnuts), macadamia nuts, peanuts, pecans, pistachios, sunflower seeds, and Persian walnuts. This part of the book is well researched. Each chapter provides an enormous reservoir of information. For each of these nut types, Rosengarten gives a description of edible species including structure of leaves, stems, flowers, and time of maturation; general ecology and pollination strategies; legends, superstitions, and other symbolisms; historical accounts that led to their discovery; when these plants were introduced to nonnative regions; how the plants are propagated; where commercial facilities are located; common pests and diseases; nutritional value, packaging and marketing techniques; countries that purchase the nuts; and delicious recipes (hors d'oeuvres, main dishes, side dishes, salads, confectioners, and deserts).
Throughout part 1, Rosengarten also provides a global overview of these 12 nut varieties as well as how these nuts are vital to many cultures and countries. He discusses principal growing regions of the world for each nut variety as well as a how these nuts are grown, processed, sorted and shipped to consumers. For example, he describes how women in India manually shell cashew nuts following roasting procedures, how husks of filberts in Turkey are beaten and removed by using thin rods or slender shoots after the nuts are dried in the sun, and how trained pig-tailed monkeys are employed to harvest coconuts in Malaysia , Thailand and Indonesia to help reduce costs. At the beginning of each chapter Rosengarten lists the nut's common name in twelve languages including French, Swedish, Japanese, Portuguese, and Dutch. Another particular strength of these chapters is how Rosengarten, enlightens the reader to the many uses of these nuts. For example, pecan shells are used as "gravel" for driveways and to provide filler for insecticides and fertilizers, glycerin in coconut oil was extensively used in soap-making throughout Europe in the nineteenth century, and tropical medicine procedures used cashew nut oil to treat scurvy, ringworm, cure cracked feet, and leprous sores.
In Part 2, Rosengarten writes short overviews of 30 other nut types from acorns to watermelon seeds. Many of these food sources are virtually unknown in the United States but are in demand in other regions of the world. For example, the sweet almond-like flavor of the souari nut is popular in northern Brazil and quandong nuts, despite their captivating tang, are grown and consumed mainly by Australians. Many other interesting facts fill this portion of the book despite the brevity of these chapters. I especially enjoyed learning that jojoba nuts are primarily used today as a substitute for sperm whale oil. The clear liquid, an unsaturated wax extracted from these seeds, is analogous to sperm whale oil and is used in drugs, plastics, leather processing, cosmetics, and industrial lubricants. Equally impressive was Rosengarten's discussion on pine (piñon) nuts. He mentioned that piñon nuts were an important wild food of American Indians. Piñon nuts were eaten raw or roasted, ground into flour, or mashed into butter. These nuts are not regarded as an important commercial tree crop. While working as a seasonal ranger at Berlin-Ichthyosaur StatePark in Austin,Nevada, however, I noticed that park visitors would gather piñon nuts from the floors of piñon-juniper woodlands. Fresh piñon nuts also could be purchased at local grocery stores throughout the Great Basin at the end of the summer during bumper crop years.
Rosengarten's book is written for the layperson, although there is a wealth of information packed into this compact book. Students and scientists studying nutrition, botany, horticulture, anthropology, and history would benefit from its content. Food connoisseurs also may like to try some of the mouth-watering recipes such as chicken with walnuts, crunchy chocolate-coconut balls, pecan snowballs with praline sauce, and macadamia nut pie. Historians and literature scholars may be enlightened by the incorporation of verses from the Bible, literary excerpts such as from Shakespeare's "Taming of the Shrew", and phrases from popular folk songs like "Eating Goober Peas" throughout the text. Chapters of the assorted nut types addressed in Part 1 and Part II are listed alphabetically for easy reference. This book represents the unabridged republication of the edition published in 1984 by Walker Publishing Company, Inc., New York. As a result, tables do not portray current consumption and production but contain data only from the 1960's through early 1980s. The book is replete with rare drawings of botanical art and photographs. Figures and illustrations emphasize the appearance of plants and nuts discussed throughout the book, how the nuts are harvested and processed for consumption, historical figures of individuals that pioneered or influenced commercial production assorted nuts, and photographs of assorted recipes. A useful glossary, bibliography, and recipe and general index are provided at the end of this work. As a botanist, I would have enjoyed the provision of a brief statement as to when these genera or similar plant forms were first encountered in the fossil record. This aspect may have helped strengthen some of Rosengarten's evolutionary conclusions.
Nina L. Baghai-Riding, Division of Biological and Physical Sciences, Delta State University, Cleveland, MS 38732
Creative Propagation, 2nd ed. Thompson, Peter. 2005. ISBN 0-88192-681-7. (Flexbind US$24.95) 360 pp. Timber Press. 133 S.W. Second Avenue, Suite 450, Portland, OR 97204-3527. Creative Propagation arrives from Timber Press with a slant towards English readers. It seeks to present a range of propagation techniques "Creative propagation, like creative accounting, might be described as the art of making much from a little-sometimes very little indeed... Propagation is one the most creative aspects of gardening, because it constantly provides new opportunities and challenges." (p. 11).
Thomson divides his book into two parts, the first dealing with general principles and techniques as well as equipment and supplies and the second turning to various popular groups of horticultural plants such as Mosses and Ferns in Chapter 7 or Alpines in Chapter 13. These groupings are taxonomic in part but mostly practical as is to be expected from a book on horticulture. At the end of each chapter, genera covered in or which are relevant to that chapter are listed with codes for when and how to propagate from seed, cuttings, or divisions.
The first part does an excellent job of clearly explaining general materials and methods, along with explaining some fine details, such as what happens to fine seed when surface sown and watered gently, and Seed Science is presented with interesting experimental data which should be accessible to any reader.
Not every method imaginable is included, however. For example, the reviewer couldn't find either the method of smoke treating seeds which can be so beneficial for species originating in areas with Mediterranean climates, or the toilet tank method. This latter method (JW Wrigley and M Fagg, Australian Native Plants, Reed Books, Sydney, p. 34) involves hanging a bag containing seeds in the tank of a home toilet. As the toilet is repeatedly flushed over the weeks and months, extensive leaching, required by some seeds, occurs.
The section on propagating carnivorous plants (pp. 196-198) includes some but far from all known genera, illustrating that Creative Propagation manages to cover a wide range of ground but at least some of the territory covered is not discussed exhaustively. The end-of-chapter summary table says that Drosera seed should be sown fresh on sphagnum moss. While this would work for some species, many others absolutely require stratification or smoke treatment for germination, making the advice of very limited value for this genus for anyone growing Australian species and of limited value even for some North American species.
The figures in Creative Propagation consist of a mix of good, though generally not exceptional, black-and-white photographs and line drawings. The photographs sometimes lack sufficient differentiation among their various elements for complete clarity, as in Figure 21 where the wood potting bench, perlite, and some of the plants blend together. The line drawings, though not lovely, do clearly illustrate the various topics, as in Figure 24, which demonstrates how to put rooting powder on a cutting.
Who should buy Creative Propagation? It certainly would be a useful guide for greenhouse managers and gardeners, and it would also be very useful for introductory and intermediate courses in horticulture. If someone was working on a particular genus and needed especially in-depth advice, previewing the book before buying would be a wise option. All-in-all, Peter Thompson's book is informative and useful, and it does meet its goal of presenting propagation as a creative field. Douglas Darnowski, Department of Biology, Indiana University Southeast.
Herbs in Bloom. A Guide to Growing Herbs as Ornamental Plants. Jo Ann Gardner. Illustrations by Holly S. Dougherty. Timber Press. Portland. Cambridge. 2005. ISBN 0-88192-698-1 394pp. Jo Ann Gardner´s book is a manifest on the beauty, wealth and perfection of nature, although, in reality, it is not a description of nature. Rather, it is an interesting monograph on herbs as components of the garden. Herb plants are a phenomenal product of nature which have offered large benefits for humans throughout history and they are still important sources for alternative medicines and cosmetics. In spite of the fact that today they strongly bred in some cases, herbs have a wild, natural origin with a large spectrum of diversity and potential use. Jo Ann Gardner concentrates on presenting natural characteristics of herbs in the garden and their ornamental value, which is a basis for potential use in the garden. This is a reason why this book can be considered an enthusiastic description of potential beauty, species diversity and aspiration towards the constructional natural perfection in the garden. The idea of gardening herbs for ornamental purposes is modern and will certainly attract followers, especially in home gardening.
This book contains three chapters that briefly present some problems connected with cultivation techniques for flowering herbs (p.17 -29), landscaping with flowering herbs (p. 31-50) and a description of herb species in alphabetic order (p. 53-359). The cultivation techniques that are presented include the growing of herbs from seeds, sowing, propagation, planting seedlings outside, and maintenance and protection against diseases and insects. The growth of herbs needs good planning, place accentation by plants, location of bed and borders, containers, edges and hedges. Herbs can cover the ground and the association between herbs and rocks is a one of the possibilities for establishing an entire garden composition. In the portraits of the herb species, some basic information is given in relation to accentation of ornamental characteristics. This book is suitable for a large circle of readers unfamiliar with herbs or gardening. Its purpose is to popularize herbs and their cultivation at a general level and to give practical advice. The use of scientific nomenclature of plants and literature citations also indicates certain scientific aspirations attached to this work.
This monograph on herbs is written with soaring enthusiasm on the basis of the authors experience with growing herbs in her own garden in upstate New York . Certainly, the literature on the subject (p. 375 - 381) is used and discussed. Moreover, 117 good quality original photographs of blooming herbs add to the scientific value of this book. The portraits of herbs with an emphasis on their ornamental value are botanically correct, although sometimes they could be more extensive and more relevant. It is difficult to understand why in chapter 3, containing plant portraits, there is inconsistent use of species names. Generally, binary species names are used but confusion exists on pages 69 (Ajuga), 89 (Anchusa), 131 (Dianthus), 143 (Filipendula), 199 (Monarda), 232 (Papaver), 239 ( Polemonium), 274 (Salvia), 296 (Santolina), 306 (Solidago ), 312 (Symphytum), 332 (Thymus), 338 (Tropaeolum), and 347 (Veronica). Moreover, there is no consistency in the presentation of the herb species.
Some species can be presented, for example, with three photographs ( Alcea rosea, p. 74-78), whilst there are no photographs at Angelica archangelica (p. 93-95), Cichorium intybus (p. 117-119), Cytis scoparius (p.128-130), Galium odoratum (p.146-148), Hyssopus officinalis (p. 163- 164), Inula helenium (p. 165-166), Lobelia cardinalis (p. 183-184), Lobelia siphilitica (p.185-186), Lysimachia nummularia (p. 187-188), Polygonatum multiflorum (p.242-244) and Tanacetum vulgare (p.323-325). This suggests a lack at credibility for the ornamental value of these species. Moreover, some species are presented in greater details than others, for example, Alcea rosea is described in 5 pages (p. 74-78) but Hyssopus officinalis takes only 2 pages (p. 163-164). In the case of each species a short description is presented. This contains species growth cycle or form (f.e. annual, perennial etc.), site and soil requirements (e.g., sun, moisture), hardiness (in zones), landscape use (e.g. ground cover), height (in in. or ft. and in cm), flower color or form (e.g. purple-blue, small) and bloom season (e.g. early summer). Certainly, such data as height is not a stable characteristic of species. Therefore, the height of Prunella vulgaris showed on p. 251 as 3 - 20 in. (7.6 - 50.8 cm) leaves a lot to be desired, especially when the factors limiting the height are not mentioned at all.
A precise reading of the book produces the basic question: what is a herb? To the botanist, a herb is a seed plant that does not develop woody tissues (Weier et al., 1974). In applied sciences, the herb is a plant grown for culinary or medicinal value. A medicinal herb may be a shrub or any other woody plant, whereas a culinary herb is a non-woody plant. Vegetables and plants simply grow for ornamental value are not herbs (Shimizu , 1995). So, herbs are seed plants that do not develop woody tissues and contain useful secondary compounds. They can be only medicinal plants or spices. In the Herbs in Bloom, a larger common definition of a herb as a plant with a history of use for its culinary, medicinal, or fragrant properties is adopted (p. 14). This definition is overly large and unfocused, I do not question that the plants found within this book would not generally be perceived to be herbs. However, in reality, methodology in applied sciences is very important, especially these days, when a new term, such as "functional food" (Hassler, 2002), is introduced. It is a paradox, but from the deep understanding of the term "herb" it follows that those herbs grown only for ornamental purposes are not longer herbs but ornamentals.
In this context, my next remark on this excellent book is unimportant. Helianthus annuus L. is a well-known garden plant and crop. In this book, it is presented as a herb (p. 152-1579), which is questionable. This plant is not mentioned in the literature for its secondary compounds with use in phytotheraphy (Ahonen, 1997; Samochowiec, 1995), nor has it been mentioned in university publications (Gubanov, 1993; Shtanko and Stanko 1992), but it is included in some other publications (Chiej 1983; Pastushenkov et al. 1998; Bolotina 2002). It is included in the list of medicinal plants in Chevallier's (1996) encyclopedia.
I consider the Herbs in Bloom to be an excellent book but I have also some critical remarks. The index of plant names (p. 383-394) with page number reference and also the biography list needs additional editing for accuracy. The same indicators in the text are not visible in the index and in the list. Certainly, these are small and technical points but they should be avoided in the next edition. As I read this book, I some time felt that herbs and their cultivation is presented only from a positive point of view.
I my opinion, herbs and their growth should be presented objectively and as completely as possible. Small things can be very important, for example, the herb comfrey (Symphytum officinale). The leaves of this herb, especially on sunny days, should only be touched by gloves. Under the influence of the sun, the leaves are scalded by the hands if touched.This herb is not only beautiful in bloom it also has, according to my research observations in the Botanical garden of the Universityof Joensuu , one more characteristic. It is an excellent plant for bees and bumble-bees. During the summer, the pollinators visit this bloom very enthusiastically. Among this herb during summer days, the hum of pollinators can be heard. Herbs in bloom are not only ornamentals. They are also the source of life and hapiness in the garden.
In summary, the book Herbs in Bloom contains very interesting information on the practical aspects of how to grow herbs. It is also a basic description of plants. It is a very useful monograph, which presents some botanical data, ideas, experience and opinions. In this sense, it is an excellent book. - Dr.
Tadeusz Aniszewski, Associate Professor, Department of Biology, University of Joensuu, Finland
Literature cited:
Ahonen, U. 1997. Fytoterapian käsikirja. [Hanbook of phytoterapy] Gummerus Kirjapaino Oy. Saarijärvi. 393pp. [In Finnish]
Bolotina, A. 2002. Dictonary of medicinal plants. Latin. English.German. Russian. "Russo". Moscow. 384 pp.
Chevallier, A. 1996. The Encyclopedia of Medicinal Plants. A practical reference Guide to More than 550 Key Medicinal Plants and Their Use. DK Publishing Inc. New York . 336 pp.
Chiej, R. 1983. Plantas Medicinales. [Medicinal Plants] Grijalbo. Barcelona . 456pp. [In Spanish]
Gubanov, I.A. 1993. Lekarstvennye rasteniya. [Medicinal plants] Izdatelstvo Moskovskogo Universiteta. 271pp. [In Russian]
Hasler, C.M. 2002. Functional Foods: Benefit, Concerns and Challenges _ a Positon Paper from the American Council on Science and Health. Journal of Nutrition 132 (12): 3772-3781.
Pastushenkov, L.V., Pastushenkov, A.L., Pastushenkov, V.L. 1998. Lekarstvennye rasteniya. [Medicinal plants] Izdatelstvo "Dean". Sankt-Peterburg. 382pp. [In Russian]
Samochowiec, L. 1995. Kompendium fitoterapii dla lekarzy i farmaceutow oraz studentow medycyny. [ Phytoterapy compendium for doctors, pharmaceutists and medicine students] Volumed. Wroclaw . 308 pp. [In Polish]
Shtanko, A.V., Stanko,S.A. 1992. Lekarstvennye rasteniya. [Medicinal plants] Izdatelstvo Petrozavodskogo Gosudarstvennogo Universiteta. Petrozavodsk. 256 pp. [In Russian]
Weier, T.E., Stocking, C.R., Barbour, M.G. 1974. Botany: An Introduction to Plant Biology. Fifth edition. John Willey & Sons. New York. 686pp.
Shimizu , H.H. 1995. Herbs. In: Armitage, A., Heffernan, M., Kleiber, C., Shimizu , H.H. Burpee Complete Gardener. A Comprehensive, Up-to-date, Fully Illustrated reference for gardeners at all levels. Macmillan,New York . p. 263-290.
Hibiscus: Hardy and Tropical Plants for the Garden. Lawton, Barbara Perry. 2004. ISBN 0-88192-654-X (Cloth US$27.95) 160 pp. Timber Press, The Haseltine Building , 133 S.W. Second Avenue , Suite 450 , Portland, OR 97204-9743 . The genus Hibiscus has long fascinated both professional botanists and gardeners alike. A comprehensive treatment of the taxonomy and horticulture of the genus would be a monumental undertaking, and is not the goal of this book. What this book does provide is a very nice entry into the world of Hibiscus with a focus on those species that are commonly cultivated.
The early chapters provide background information. Those species found in North America are discussed, as are several related species of Malvaceae that are important horticulturally or as weeds. Chapter 3
(History, Traditions, and Uses) is an especially enjoyable piece that describes how Hibiscus has been used in various cultures from art to edible and medicinal uses.
The three central chapters provide more detailed information on the three primary groups of cultivated species. Chapter 4 addresses Rose of Sharon (Hibiscus syriacus), chapter 5 the Hardy Hibiscuses (Hibiscus moscheutos and relatives), and chapter 6 the Tropical Hibiscuses (Hibiscus rosa-sinensis and relatives). Each of these chapters provides sections on the history of the species, modern breeding advances, cultivation techniques, and design tips on how and where to use them.
Following chapters deal with specific issues related to Hibiscus cultivation. Chapters are included on diseases and pests, propagation, and the perplexing nomenclature and taxonomy of the genus. The final chapter ("A Gallery of Hibiscuses") briefly describes many of the commonly encountered species of Hibiscus and includes information on etymology, geographic distribution, growing conditions, plant features, and where they may be grown. Finally, short lists of cultivars of the primarily cultivated species are provided along with abbreviated descriptions. The endnotes include a USDA Hardiness Zone map, glossary, information on major Hibiscus societies and nurseries, and books for further reading.
This is a very well written book that was both enjoyable and enlightening to read. The book is also nicely illustrated with both line drawings and photographs. While it does not provide a comprehensive treatment of any of the issues discussed, it does provide the reader with a glimpse into the complexity and beauty of Hibiscus. I would certainly highly recommend it to anyone interested in gardening with Hibiscus as an entry into the sometimes bewildering world of cultivated hibiscus. Randall Small, Dept. of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, The University of Tennessee , Knoxville TN 37996 .
KIN
Tune: Trees
I think that I shall never see
A real phylogenetic tree,
A tree with turtles hanging high,
And bullfrogs from a limb nearby-
Imagine man atop the shoot
While poor amoeba crawls the root.
A Scale of Nature was the best
Conception Carl Linne expressed,
While Archetypes were madly spewed
By Baron Cuvier when stewed,-
These will not do for you and me
Since old Lamarck first made a tree.
Dr. J.D. Corrington
Songs for Comparative Anatomy
in Songs of Biology, 4th Ed.
1953.
Timber Press Pocket Guide to Shade Perennials. W. George Schmid. 2005. ISBN 0-88192-709-0 (Flexbind US $19.95) 252 pp. Timber Press. 133 S.W. Second Avenue , Suite450 , Portland, OR 97204-3527 .
Like the Timber Press Pocket Guide to Ornamental Grasses (reviewed in PSB 51(1)), the TPPG to Shade Perennials is a condensed version of the author's larger work, An Encyclopedia of Shade Perennials (Timber Press, 2002). The most recent Timer Press catalog suggests that these pocket guides are "…essential companions for the nursery or garden center." I had assumed that the target audience would be slightly broader for this book, and after reading it and I think it would be a good reference for anyone working with a shady area, although I believe that novice gardeners would shy away from it because of the emphasis on Latin names and short descriptions.
I really liked this book and agree with the preface that explains that this is a guide to "the very best of the available shade perennials" and it includes classic shade plants and highlights others from Asia and around the world. This book definitely provides a glimpse of the diversity of plants that tolerate various levels of shade. The introduction chapter does a good job a defining the different kinds of shade including known synonyms of how Schmid describes the shade tolerances of the plants he presents. There is also a brief discussion of soil pH, amendments, fertilizers, pests, and problems that are associated with shade created by large shade trees. Most of the text is in this section is very introductory and too brief so you will need to look elsewhere for more information. The lack of pictures in this section makes it less useful in the identification of pests and problems. Schmid also recommends going to the USDA county extension office for help for just about everything. I did appreciate his plug for using biological control and avoiding the use of chemicals. He also provides a short section on the pros and cons of container gardening that might be helpful to some readers.
The next section of the book lists shade plants (by scientific name) for specific purposes and locations (e.g., fast-growing, ground covers, plants for wet soils, dry shade, plants with winter interest, leaf color, full shade) that is very helpful for planning. I disagree with some of his placements of certain plants, but the author gardens in Georgia that has a different growing season that north-west Illinois (e.g., certain plants in Illinois do not stay evergreen like they would in Georgia).
The meat of the book is over 1000 plant descriptions. They are arranged alphabetically by scientific name. As a botanist, I appreciate this, but the general public may find this a hindrance. Common names are provided for most entries after the Latin name. Each entry contains a short description including origin, USDA zone, and shade and soil requirements. The description ends with comments from Schmid and descriptions of any cultivars. Most entries include a color photograph, and at a minimum each genus has a photo. The dust jacket says there are 310 photographs. I liked the descriptions, though some may find them too short, but I feel they give the reader enough information to decide if the plant will work for their area.
I did have some problems with some of the entries that I will briefly list here. Many photos are out of focus. Several species that are known to be invasive in the U.S. are included and these should be clearly avoided in some areas (e.g., Lygodium japonicum, Lysimachia spp., Vinca spp.; www.invasive.org is a great website to check for invasive species). Having the origin listed for each entry helps to determine if the plant is native to your area, but Schmid uses broad categories for origin (e.g., Eastern North America, Asia). There are also several entries that include sensitive species (i.e., rare, threatened, or endangered in some part of their range; e.g., Cimicifuga racemosa, Chamaelirium luteum, Cypripedium calceolus (= C. parviflorum), Platanthera ciliaris, Shortia galacifolia, Thelypteris noveboracensis, Trillium cernuum, Viola canadensis) and while they may be in cultivation gardeners need to know where their plants come from because poaching from the wild is a common occurrence. There is also no comment regarding the difficulty in establishing some of these rare species.
Other information in this book includes the USDA and European hardiness zone maps (although the USDA map is in black and white, while the European map is in color). There is also a section on nursery sources in Canada, the UnitedKingdom , and U.S. that specialize in shade plants and/or hard to find plants. There is a small glossary, but most of the terms are familiar.
My criticisms aside, I like this book and believe it would make a good reference for anyone needing some ideas for other plants to grow in the shade besides the common hosta varieties seen in the large box stores. The TPPG to Shade Perennials offers a good mix of North American, Asian, and European plants to diversify your garden or to specialize your garden towards plants from a particular region.
Dr. Jason Koontz, Biology Department, Augustana College , Rock Island, IL 61201
Linnaeus' Philosophia Botanica. Freer. Stephen (Translator). 2003. ISBN 0-19-850122-6 (Cloth) 402 pp. Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street,Oxford , UK, OX2 6DP. In 1753 Linnaeus published Species Plantarum, the foundation of botanical nomenclature and the reason for which he is justly famous. Naively this reader assumed that Philosophia, first published in 1751, would be primarily a justification of Linnaeus' system. In fact, it is much more. In his preface "To the Botanical Reader" Linnaeus notes that Philosophia Botanica (The Science of Botany) is based on his earlier Fundamenta Botanica (1736) but that "…my pupils also vehemently demanded of me that I should add the parts of plants and technical terms as used by me; and that they should be accurately defined, according to the method by which I habitually propounded them in my lectures." The significance of this approach is elucidated by Paul Alan Cox in his introduction. "Those of us who are botanists and who read Linnaeus' scholarly works often forget that Carl Linnaeus was first and foremost a teacher…For those of us fortunate enough to have fallen under the benevolent influence of a charismatic teacher of biology, we can only imagine what a lecture given by Linnaeus must have been like." My interest piqued, I was now ready to approach this work as a student of botanical education as well as a student of the history of botany.
The book is a collection of 365 definitions and explanations divided into 12 chapters. I was familiar with this format because it was still used 100 years later in several of my early botanical texts, including de Jussieu' s Cours Élémentaire d'Histoire Naturelle: Botanique, Lindley's The Elements of Botany, or Gray's New Lessons and Manual of Botany . What is notably different, and modern, about Linnaeus, however, is that not only does he present an outline and elaboration of his teachings, but he summarizes the alternative viewpoints of his contemporaries and he is careful to credit others for ideas he accepts and supports. I was pleasantly surprised by this approach.
The first chapter, Bibliotheca, is first and foremost a listing of the fundamental authors Linnaeus suggests should be included in botanists libraries. However, it is also an outline of the history of botany, chronicling the principal botanists of the 15th, 16 th, and 17th centuries as well as "The FATHERS [who] established the first rudiments of botany… the Greeks…the Romans…the Asiatics …the Arabs. The authors are arranged by subdisciplines and in the case of collectors, by geography. I was humbled to find the status afforded my forefather anatomists as listed in entry 43 - "The AMATEURS OF BOTANY (6) are those who have produced various [works] about botany, though they do not properly pertain to botanical science: such as anatomists (44), gardeners ((45), physicians (46), and miscellaneous [writers].(52)." Thankfully plant anatomists are now included among the ranks of professional botanists (but I think we still could work harder at including some of our colleagues working in the applied fields).
The second chapter, "Systemata," begins with outlines and comparisons of a dozen earlier and contemporary taxonomic systems with Linnaeus' own "calycine" and "sexual" systems. Additional systems are provided for specific taxa: those with compound flowers; grasses; algae; mosses; fungi; etc. I was intrigued by some of his notes. For instance, on "the NATURAL METHOD" (entry 77): "This is the beginning and the end of what is needed in botany. Nature does not make leaps. All plants exhibit their contiguities on either side, like territories on a geographical map." This is followed by his natural classification of the genera of flowering plants.
The next four chapters, "Plants," The Fuit-body," Sex," and "Characters" and the final two, "Sketches" and "Potencies" are a textbook of flowering plant morphology. In addition to providing terms and definitions, in many cases Linnaeus lists specific taxa as illustrative examples. For instance, Bauhinia and Armeniaca have glandular stipules. As earlier, references are frequently made to earlier authorities who coined specific terms. For example Vaillant classified "A complete flower [as one that] possesses a perianth and a corolla. The first appendix provides 11 detailed plates illustrating common vegetative and reproductive structures. I plan to make the first three, on leaves, available to my students as they learn to use keys.
Chapters 7 though 10, "Names," "Definitions," "Varieties," and "Synonyms" include the content I naively was expecting from "Linnaeus' Philosophia Botanica." In "Names" he provides rules for choosing or avoiding certain terms or forms. Of course, "The generic name must be fixed unalterably, before any specific name is devised." And "A specific name without a generic one is like a clapper9 without a bell." The latter quote illustrates one of the joys of this book. The translator provides copious notes that not only interpret translations or provides etymology, but frequently provides historical context. In this case "clapper" comes from "Pistillum, rendered `pistil' in botanical contexts."
All in all this is a delightful and informative translation of a botanical classic. It is in fact a syllabus for a traditional botany course as taught by a master. While subsequent botanical educators retained some of Linnaeus' pedagogy, specifically a sequential list of concepts to be learned, they lost the historical context, the citation of authorities, the illustrative examples and the personal examples that are utilized in this work - - and that current research in science education says are important to foster meaningful student learning. Anyone interested in the history of botany and in teaching botany will enjoy and benefit from reading this book. Marshall D. Sundberg, Department of Biological Sciences, Emporia State University.
Biodiversity of Fungi, Inventory and Monitoring Methods, edited by Gregory M. Mueller, Gerald F. Bills, and Mercedes S. Foster, 2004. ISBN 0-12-509551-1 (hardcover $99.95) 777 pp, Elsevier Academic Press, 525 B Street,San Diego, CA 92101-4495 .
For the past five years, I have been carrying out an inventory of the biodiversity of ectomycorrhizas on Oregon white oak. Frequent subjects of conversation at meetings are how one samples roots—the size and depth of soil cores, number of cores, number of trees, beta diversity, how to sort and identify ectomycorrhizas based on morphology and DNA, how to keep vouchers, etc. So it was with eager anticipation that I opened Biodiversity of Fungi: Inventory and Monitoring Methods and scanned the chapter titles. Nothing on ectomycorrhizas! A chapter on arbuscular mycorrhizas, and chapters on many other fungal guilds, but nothing on the fungi that transfer water and nutrients to many tree genera. The index lists one entry for ectomycorrhizas in the context of mycoparasites, but no section is evident. This is a big "Oops" for this book.
So recovering from the shock of the missing piece, I asked what was particularly valuable or useful about this book. There is plenty. The editors have assembled an impressive array of contributors, nearly ninety in number with 2-3,000 person-years of experience in mycology. The wealth of knowledge gathered in this book is remarkable.
The style of the chapters approaches that seen in "Commentary" articles in journals, but not in scientific papers. The language is particularly accessible, slightly informal, giving a glimpse into the way that people think about their research and their rationale for protocol choices. One could get help in considering diverse alternatives, such as ways of quantifying diversity or choice of molecular methods.
The central 20 chapters of the book, 500 pages, describe groups of fungi according to their hosts and habitats: terrestrial, lignicolous, lichenized, sequestrate, fungi on wood, inside leaves, and saprobic on soil. Then there are fungi associated with arthropods, rotifers, vertebrates, and dung. Also fungi in diverse habitats: freshwater and salt water. These chapters link diverse points of view—ecology with systematics, theory with practicality. There is a real natural history approach in the context of molecular and digital technology.
The illustrations are uneven. Basically, this is not an illustrated text. For example, Joe Morton's excellent chapter, "Mutualistic arbuscular endomycorrhizal fungi," has a single diagram that would enable no one to identify AM fungi in roots. We know from his beautiful website that he has the photos, but the editors did not encourage their inclusion. By contrast, the multi-authored Chapter 8, "Terrestrial and lignicolous macrofungi," includes five half-page color photos of mycologists collecting and identifying fungi—images that also will enable no one to identify fungi. In Chapter 7, the picture of the guy shooting lichens from trees is mildly entertaining.
Anywhere you enter the book, you will find something to pique your interest. Sit down and read any one chapter and be transported into that world. Now if they will include a chapter on ectomycorrhizas in the second edition…
Darlene Southworth, Southern Oregon University , Ashland, OR 97520 .
Evolution
Tune: "Coming thru' the Rye"
1
How did sea forms change to land forms,
Coming down the years?
Adaptation, or selection,
Which of these appears?
Did the food allure the species,
Tell us, we implore?
Or did fate remould the wanderer
For its life on shore?
2
Some have searched through every square inch
Of the land and sea
To secure a fair solution
Of this mystery.
Eager have they scanned the sea-shore,
For a tracheate
Then traversed the mouths of rivers
For a pulmonate.
3
Evolution has its problems,
A missing link or two.
There are folks in this department
Who'll make all clear to you.
They will help you in your trouble,
Urge you on anew,
So we'll thank our learned professors
And wish good luck to you!
Anna M. Rae, 1909
in :
Songs of Biology, 4th ed. 1953.
Vitamin C: Function and Biochemistry in Animals and Plants. Edited by Han Asard, James M. May and Nicholas Smirnoff. BIOS Scientifc Publishers, NY. 2004. This book is a valuable resource on the history, literature and research of ascorbate, an essential biomolecule. The book should be of interest to research scientists directly working in the area of antioxidants as well as others whose peripheral interest is in specific areas related to ascorbate's various biological roles. The book is very well edited with each chapter effectively linked and building upon preceding chapters. The sequence of the chapters is quite appropriate beginning with a historical framework leading to biosynthesis, nonoxidant roles of ascorbate, redox chemistry and concluding with clinical and nutritional perspectives of ascorbate. In many of the chapters there is a comparative analysis of plant and animal research on ascorbate. In general, as a technical book it is quite a readable resource, however, there is some repetitiveness that occurs throughout the book which would be expected when relating one chapter to another. If there is one recurring theme throughout the book, it is not how much has been learned about ascorbate but how much is unknown.
Appropriately, the book begins with an excellent review on the biosynthesis of Vitamin C. Recent research in this area has provided the impetus for a fresh look at the chemistry and biology of ascorbate. One of the editors, Nicholas Smirnoff has been a leader in the area of elucidating the ascorbate biosynthetic pathways in plants. A refreshing evolutionary perspective provides further evidence that information on ascorbate biosynthesis is lacking while raising the question on the origin of oxidative stress.
Understanding ascorbate biosynthesis, catabolism and recycling combined with genetic analysis and manipulation may have potential application in elevating food nutritional content and enhancing environmental stress tolerance in plants. However, transgenic experiments related to overexpressing enzymes in biosynthesis and recycling have had mixed results in elevating endogenous ascorbate levels. The use of QTL analysis and insertional mutagenesis approaches in altering plant ascorbate levels have not developed as rapidly as transgenic research. The need for continued work on biosynthesis as well as the regulatory aspects of the various ascorbate pathways is quite evident in these early chapters. Early on, one minor weakness of this section is a number of studies cited are unpublished results.
Another area where the biological understanding of ascorbate biosynthesis may have practical application is the industrial synthesis of ascorbate. Currently, industrial production of ascorbate results in significant energy costs and chemical waste disposal problems. Conceptually, to put plant biosynthetic genes into yeast for commercial ascorbate production seems cost and environmentally beneficial but whether it will have commercial viability will depend on future global ascorbate demands and economics.
The book takes a departure from biosynthesis beginning with Christine Foyer's insightful analysis of ascorbate's nonoxidant roles. Ascorbate's regulatory properties that will require more research is its effects on gene expression, plant cell elongation, seed germination and fruit ripening. Intuitively, I would think there would be more information available on ascorbate in fruit ripening because of its significance in fruit nutritional content, however, this is not the case. Also, a later chapter revisits and updates ascorbate's role as a cofactor in proline hydroxylation and further indicates ascorbate's possible effects on protein turnover and gene expression. Further research into ascorbate's nonoxidant roles should be quite an informative and productive avenue of research in plants and animals.
Unlike the emphasis on ascorbate biosynthesis and regulation in plants, the importance of transport of ascorbate and dehydroascorbate in animal systems comes to the forefront in the middle section of the book. In a number of vertebrates, including humans, ascorbate and dehydroascorbate transport has significant influences on biochemical and physiological processes. For example, the transport of dehydroascorbate may influence bone recycling. As a plant biologist I found the ascorbate transport work at the cellular and molecular levels in animals interesting reading and it certainly accentuates the lack of a comparable understanding of ascorbate transport in plants. This disparity is understandable, as plants are the dietary source of ascorbate for many animal species so the research emphasis on unraveling plant ascorbate biosynthesis is paramount. In contrast, in animals including humans that are deficient in ascorbate biosynthesis, the body's utilization and transport of ascorbate becomes significant in understanding certain types of pathologies. The discussion on ascorbate flow in neuronal and nonneuronal tissue is interesting. Some of the transport work reveals that ascorbate is capable of regulating its own transporter levels which has implication for human clinical studies using oral Vitamin C supplements. Again, I was surprised by the paucity of basic research on Vitamin C function in the central nervous system and immune system.
Membrane redox proteins and ascorbate recycling are complex processes but are well explained in terms of their impact on regulating ascorbate levels in mammalian tissues. The form of ascorbate (reduced and/or oxidized) in biological systems is important in understanding ascorbate's biological roles as well as in experimentally elevating ascorbate content to confer environmental stress resistance in plants. The potential for ascorbate to act as a pro-oxidant is mentioned in a number of chapters but it remains unclear whether the reactions leading to a pro-oxidant function of ascorbate occur in vivo.
The later discussion on Vitamin C levels and age indicates another transition in the organization of the book. Although some of the earlier chapters refer to human clinical studies and ascorbate, the later chapters emphasize the difficulties in sorting through ascorbate levels and effects on human physiology and pathologies. Early clinical studies were inconsistent with regard to factors such as health history, sex and age differences in considering ascorbate effects. For example, the required doses of Vitamin C for the elderly are not known and may be related to age dependent changes in Vitamin C transport and mobilization. Clinical studies examining the interaction of Vitamins C and E are equally confusing and inconsistent. These results emphasize the need for more controlled basic research on Vitamin C requirements in conjunction with more structured clinical studies which is emphasized in the concluding chapters of the book. The concept or approach of optimal nutrient ingestion is introduced toward the end of the book. This approach is very systematic in analyzing human nutrient requirements, beginning with a biochemical and cellular analyses and using this information for the rational design of effective clinical studies. A final intriguing point is in relation to the concept of biochemical individuality which raises the possibility that enzyme responses to Vitamin C may be different between individuals because of single nucleotide polymorphisms.
In summary, this book is very effective in presenting a comprehensive and current focus on Vitamin C. This significant contribution would be a valuable resource to a variety of scientists regardless of the field of basic, applied or clinical research interest. Susan Jones-Held, Biology Department, King's College, Wilkes-Barre , PA 18711
A Natural History of Ferns. Moran, Robbin C. 2004. ISBN 0-88192-667-1 (Cloth US$29.95) 302 pp Timber Press, The Haseltine Building , 133 S.W. Second Avenue , Suite 450 , Portland, OR97204 -9743. A Natural History of Ferns is a compilation of 33 essays, many of which are based on previously published articles in the American Fern Society's Fiddlehead Forum. The book is intended for an extensive audience-from the general public to trained botanists and students. It contains a glowing forward by Oliver Sacks and a preface by the author. The preface reveals an important truth-this book is not only about ferns but also about lycophytes. But, as Moran says "how many people would buy a book titled A Natural History of Pteridophytes ?" Although many of the essays contain information about pteridophytes of a particular area, the book is not a field guide. Instead it offers more biological, paleological, historical and cultural information about an amazing group of plants.
Because the book comprises essays arranged into six sections, individual chapters or sections could be read while still allowing the reader to take away a great deal of information about pteridophytes. I think these readers would greatly miss out, though, as all the chapters together paint a better picture of why these plants are so interesting.
The first section starts at the beginning with the life cycle of the plants. Moran explains how pteridophytes are different from flowering plants and gymnosperms by describing the difference in life cycles. Much of this first section is focused on spores, with details of spore physiology, morphology and the chemical and physical reactions of spore shooting. He also describes the fascinating alternative processes by which pteridophytes reproduce via apogamy, vegetatively via buds and gemmae, as well through hybridization and polyploidy.
The second section on classification is interesting if you are a professional botanist or student. I fear that this section might be overwhelming and tedious to a general reader, though, with the magnitude of long and difficult-to-pronounce names and the rules of botanical nomenclature. In the last chapter of the section, though, Moran reveals that botanical classification and nomenclature can be so exciting that even Hollywood made a movie about it. In the 1971 movie, A New Leaf, the discovery and naming of a new fern species is integral to unraveling the twisted love story and even saves a young botanist's life!
Fern fossils are the topic of the third section. Moran tells the story of lepidodendrids and a mystery of a giant Equisetum. He follows the history of two fern families from the Mesozoic to the present and discusses the paleological history of the pteridophytes in order to answer questions about fern distributions and age. For botanists who are used to working with plants with little or no fossil record, this section is especially refreshing!
The fourth section is about some of the more interesting adaptations by ferns to ensure survival in harsh environments. Moran gives details about the potato fern, Solanopteris, which harbors defensive ants in potato-like swollen stems and provides insight on how ferns can become trees without producing wood. He reveals the amazing story behind iridescence in ferns such as Trichomanes elegans, why scaly polypody curls up with the lower surfaces of the leaves exposed and the fascinating physiology of the quillwort, Isoetes. Also discussed in this section are how bracken fiddleheads are not only a delicacy but also deadly poisonous, and details of the mathematical perfection of fiddlehead spirals.
The fifth section is about geography and distributions of ferns. Moran discusses ferns on islands, why some ferns are distributed only in Eastern North America and far Eastern Asia (China , Japan , etc) and fern abundance in the tropics. He also describes the ferns of the South American tepuis and the amazing independent gametophytes found in the Eastern United States that never produce sporophytes.
In the sixth section, Moran talks about the relationship between pteridophytes and people. He discusses how teas and medicines are made from Ophioglossum and the devastating outbreaks and eventual control of the weedy floating fern, Salvinia molesta. He relates how integral the world's tiniest fern, Azolla, is to rice agriculture and how eating the fern nardoo (Marsilea drummondii) can cause you to starve to death. Finally, he recounts stories of the fern mania of Victorian England.
Overall, I really enjoyed this book and would recommend that anyone with an interest in plants read it. Robbin Moran has a writing style that is easy to read and follow and his writing is filled with humorous anecdotes and stories that made me smile often while reading. He does an excellent job of explaining scientific processes and terminology simply and succinctly so as not to lose a general reader. There is an extensive glossary and bibliography for further readings. Best of all, his interest and passion for the scientific study of pteridophytes comes out as he conveys his vast knowledge of this fascinating group of plants. The book is filled with drawings, diagrams and pictures, which complement the text perfectly. There are 11 pages of color plates that not only illustrate plants talked about in the text, but serves as eye candy for those of us who love plants! Courtney C. Finch, Department of Biology, Saint Louis University, St. Louis, MO 63103.
Deep Morphology: Toward a Renaissance of Morphology in Plant Systematics. Stuessy, Tod F., Veronika Mayer & Elvira Hörandl ( eds) 2003. ISBN 3-906166-07-4. ( cloth US$) 326 pp. A. R. G. Gantner Verlag, Ruggelll , Liechtenstein . Distributed by Koeltz Scientifid Books, P.O. Box 1360, D-61453 Koenigstein, Germany. Deep Morphology is the outcome of a 2001 symposium that gathered a distinguished international group of morphologists and systematists to assess the role of morphology in modern plant systematics. To varying degrees, the 14 chapters, review previous work, present new data, and recommend the direction for future efforts.
In the introductory chapter, Anton Weber differentiates between the morphology of systematists and the morphlogy of morphologists. The former, sometimes called "phytograpy" or "descriptive morphology," concentrates on characters and character states that provide the data for systematic studies. The morphology of morphologists, argues Weber, has a more philosophical basis and was never concerned with phylogenetic relationships. After reviewing the history of both subdisciplines, Weber suggests that both have power to be exploited in systematic studies. Furthermore, while morphology is no longer the primary data source, he provides several examples illustrating the power of combining morphology with molecular data to elucidate relationships. This, in fact, sets the stage for the rest of the book where each of the authors makes a case for the continued importance of morphology in systematic studies.
The next 12 chapters are divided into three sections, Genetics and Development, Phylogenetic Analysis, and Ecology and Adaptation. In the first section Backmann and Gailing review the application of quantitative trait locus (QTL) analysis to reveal the major and modifier genes associated with phenotypic change. As they note, much of the work in this area has dealt with agricultural crops where both multiple additive genes and saltative major gene effects may be discerned. Diggle makes a strong case that position in the plant (architectural effects) is an underappreciated factor in determining morphology of organs, and hence character states that may be recorded for a species. Leins and Erbar demonstrate the utility of developmental data in analyzing morphology and constructing phylogenies by providing several examples of how similar mature structures may form by different developmental pathways. In the final chapter, Gleissberg provides a brief review of "Evo-Devo" and proposes a plan of future research in this field.
Williams and Humphries provide a brief introductory chapter to the Phylogenetic Analysis section by analyzing the concept of homology from a historical and contemporary perspective. Endress provides a thorough review of the kinds of morphological data that have proven useful in phylogenetic studies and makes the point that "..our present morphological arsenal is very incomplete." Hufford and McMahon turn tradition on its head by using phylogenetic analyses, a posteriori, to dissect patterns of morphological diversity within groups. They further define five parameters which morphospace, the existing morphological diversity.
Much of the final section deals with the ecological adaptations of particular structures. Barthlott et al. analyze epicuticular waxes, Hess examines the structure and function of pollen walls, and Baas et al., cover secondary xylem. These chapters tended to be more specialized than the others in the book, yet each provides a wealth of examples of useful morphological characters for phylogenetic analysis. In their chapter on plant biomechanics, Speck et al., have a different perspective on the importance of ontogeny and developmental anatomy by concentrating on the functionality of structure as growth proceeds - - essentially the physics of Evo-Devo. In the final chapter of the section Givnish suggests that a better understanding of ecological adaptations (Eco-Evo-Devo) will provide additional power to phylogenetic analyses.
In the books final chapter Stussey draws upon each of the preceding chapters to discuss the broad potential of future morphological investigations to provide a rich source of information, complementary to molecular data, for phylogenetic analyses. While the book is a series of treatises that can stand on their own, the editors and the authors have done a good job of integrating with each other to make the work a coherent whole. It would serve as an excellent text for a graduate seminar and be a good reference to stimulate researchers in one area to consider broader implications for their own work as well as to suggest possible collaborations. Marshall D. Sundberg, Department of Biology, Emporia State University.
Cacti of the Trans-Pecos and Adjacent Areas. A. Michael Powell and James F. Weedin. 2004. ISBN 0-89672-531-6. US $60 (cloth; 7 x 10" format). xv + 512 pages + 314 color plates. Texas Tech University Press: Lubbock .
Powell and Weedin's Cacti of the Trans-Pecos and Adjacent Areas is a beautifully compiled regional taxonomic treatment, in the old-fashioned tradition, but with a few modern twists such as chromosome counts. Their book is filled with details that only people with long-term love of and association with a group of plants could write. It is also filled with the largely unpublished wisdom of Dave Ferguson and Allen Zimmerman, who rival Powell and Weedin in their expertise of the cacti of the southwest U.S.
Three things make this book shine. First, for each species and variety, the authors provide a detailed distribution map. In light of the virtually non-existent thumbnail maps in the recently published treatment of cacti in volume four of the Flora of North America (2004) and Lyman Benson's thorough but idiosyncratic taxonomic treatment in The Cacti of the United States and Canada (1982), Powell and Weedin's maps are virtually worth the price of their book. Second, unlike many previous authors, Powell and Weedin provide data on seemingly all existing chromosome counts. With polyploidy being such an important force in cactus evolution, this data is invaluable. At least for the Trans-Pecos of Texas, this book saves us from having to piece together chromosome count data from a diffuse and often obscure cytological literature. Third, Powell and Weedin are careful to enumerate juvenile characteristics of all taxa. For example, theirs is the first published assertion that, of the prickly pears in Trans-Pecos Texas, only Opuntia engelmannii and O. polyacantha sensu stricto have hairy seedlings. Juvenile characters are important for diagnosis of taxa and should also prove valuable for studies of heterochrony in cacti.
This book is filled with many charming details, some of I will highlight in this and the next paragraph. Apparently Opuntia ellisiana [syn. O. lindheimeri var. ellisiana] is the only prickly pear in Trans-Pecos Texas that lacks sensitive stamens. All other Trans-Pecos Texas prickly pear species (as well as Lophophora williamsii and Coryphantha echinus var. robusta) have thigmotropic stamens, i.e. stamens that when touched fold in around pollinating insects or the style. Powell and Weedin provide evidence that Peniocereus greggii is obligately cross-pollinated and state that pollination syndrome and floral morphology strongly indicate that P. greggii should be pollinated by hawkmoths (Manduca spp.). However, they then report that nobody has ever reported seeing hawkmoths at P. greggii flowers.
Although P. greggii plants are notoriously cryptic in nature, several populations are well-known and many people have gone out in the desert to witness the virtually synchronous flowering of many clones in a population. Lack of hawkmoth sightings is therefore noteworthy and in need of study. Finally, Powell and Weedin report a curious way to get rid of warts in humans using glochids and spines from Opuntia polyacantha . Cut the wart, place the glochids and spines in the cut, and then burn the spines. Unfortunately, they do not report the obvious control of whether cutting and burning without the glochids and spines would have the same effect.
I was especially intrigued by Powell and Weedin's assertion on page 38, that "polyploid taxa in Opuntia and Echinocereus ( Trans-Pecos Texas ) generally have a greater biogeographic distribution in multiple plant communities (mountains, grasslands, desert) than do diploid taxa, which are most often found in single-plant communities. In Opuntia, approximately 70% of polyploids occur in multiple communities, whereas 100% of Echinocereus polyploids are found in multiple communities." This provides some hints as to the ecological and evolutionary implications of polyploidy, which are especially important in light of nascent theories explaining how polyploidy may create greater phenotypic plasticity and cause radiations into a greater number of ecological niches. However, I wish that Powell and Weedin had supplied more data or had supplied any citations to support their fascinating assertion. Even though they provide the data given in the above quotation about polyploids, they do not provide the corresponding data (controls) for diploids. Furthermore, is their data for polyploids limited to tetraploids, hexaploids, octaploids and higher ploidy levels, while excluding triploids that might respond differently? Does their data generalize to all genera, and not just to Echinocereus and Opuntia? Do the three segregate genera of Opuntia ( Opuntia, Cylindropuntia, Grusonia) show similar patterns with respect to polyploids radiating into multiple communities? Powell and Weedin open up a fantastic door by very roughly correlating ploidy level with ecological radiations. Hopefully further data will be forthcoming from Powell and Weedin _ or from others.
In general, I found this book parochial, but that is probably the concession one must make in order to have a great old-fashioned regional treatment of a family. Powell and Weedin assert without justification the conventional wisdom that the genus Pereskia is primitive (ancestral, basal) in the cactus family, even though one of their former students has been adamant that Pereskia is highly derived (M.P. Griffith, 2004, Taxon). Powell and Weedin also seem parochial in not having jumped on the modern bandwagon of segregating the genera Cylindropuntia and Grusonia from Opuntia. Powell and Weedin seem to adhere to the biological species concept and thereby are willing to distinguish species solely based on different ploidy levels, e.g. Echinocereus pectinatus and E. dasyacanthus (but antithetically, they consider Mammillaria prolifera and Coryphantha vivipara to each form a single species, even though both taxa contain diploid and polyploid individuals and have enormous geographic ranges). Although the biological species concept may make sense for some animal taxa, most contemporary botanists seem to have largely ignored this species concept. For example, virtually no botanists consider the diploid, tetraploid, and hexaploid populations of creosote bush, Larrea tridentata, to be anything but a single species. Finally and most peculiarly, Powell and Weedin continue with the parochial mantra of protesting polyphyly in systematic treatments, even though they seem as acutely aware as anyone (except maybe for Don Pinkava and his former students) of the role of introgression and allopolyploidy in cactus evolution (see for example their discussion of the messy taxa Opuntia phaeacantha and Echinocereus x roetteri). Once one admits that reticulate evolution is important, why stress polyphyly, which really only makes sense within the framework of a tree topology? Stating that this book is parochial is not meant to be pejorative. Rather, Powell and Weedin see cacti of Trans-PecosTexas from one of many possible perspectives, one that is very useful so long as the reader does not forget the authors' perspective.
This book, however, has several minor problems and omissions. The authors make the classic mistake of assuming that the Trans-Pecos only includes those portions of Texas _ and not also New Mexico _ between the Pecos and Rio Grande. The title of the book should state explicitly this, as does Schmidly's 1977 Mammals of Trans Pecos Texas, especially since Powell and Weedin themselves use the phrase `Trans Pecos Texas' (e.g. pages 38 and 320). It would have been helpful to have included a list of newly described taxa and combinations at the start of the book, as is done in the abstract of all modern journal articles. Some of the distribution maps are ambiguously or improperly labeled. For example, the key to the distribution map for the genus Ancistrocactus should have a black circle, rather than a black rectangle, for A. tobuschii. The relative lack of illustrations is unusual in this modern era of publishing, although this omission undoubtedly keeps the price of the book down. Powell and Weedin do however include color illustrations of all taxa, but these suffer from not being integrated with the text, containing too much blank space between the color photos, and containing many images that are too dark or with too many shadows. Several of the color plates fail to adequately depict diagnostic characters, such as the peg-like spines in Coryphantha minima. Powell and Weedin only list herbarium records for new taxa and new combinations published in this book. It would have been extremely helpful had Powell and Weedin also listed representative herbarium specimen examined for those taxa for which experts disagree on species or generic limits or disagree on relative relatedness of taxa.
The relatively minor problems with Cacti of the Trans-Pecos and Adjacent Area should not overshadow the wealth of information and years of experience that went into this traditional book. The cacti of Trans-Pecos Texas have been overlooked for many decades, largely because these cacti are not as large nor as spectacular as cacti of the Sonoran Desert or central Mexico. Anybody seriously interested in North American cacti should acquire this book and treasure its good points, while understanding its relatively minor shortcomings. Powell and Weedin have done an exemplary job, in the fine natural history and taxonomic tradition of my youth. I sincerely hope that we are still fostering and mentoring such dedicated naturalists and hope that we can look forwards to similar sorts of work from subsequent generations. Root Gorelick, School of Life Sciences, Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287-4501 .
The Moss Flora of Britain and Ireland . Ed. 2. A. J. E. Smith. 2004. ISBN 0 521 81640 8: cloth (US$180) ISBN 0 521 54672 9: paper (US$85). 1012 pp. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK .
The moss and liverwort floras of Britain and Ireland are probably known better than any area of similar size in the world. Consequently, this revision of a widely admired book about moss diversity and identification, first published in 1978, is a major event. MFBI builds on a durable tradition. The mosses of Ireland were first enumerated by Dawson Turner (1804), and not long after that appeared Muscologia Britannica by William Jackson Hooker (Turner's son-in-law and recipient of his herbarium) and Thomas Taylor (1818). The latter book went through three editions in the 1800s. However, anyone thinking that the 19th century must have seen the complete documentation of the rich and complex moss flora of this geologically and topographically varied part of northwest Europe will be sobered to learn the following. About 10% of the 763 species treated in the MFBI has been added since the first edition was issued 26 years ago: 8 new species with type localities in the treated region, 25 other mosses not previously collected in Britain and Ireland , and, as the result of taxonomic monography, an additional 51 newly recognized species for those countries. Used in conjunction with volumes 2 and 3 of Atlas of the Bryophytes of Britain and Ireland (Hill et al., 1992, 1994), an unrivalled amount of bryological detail is available to students of the British and Irish floras.
The book presents introductory material and an illustrated glossary (both of which will help beginners); a key to genera (potentially applicable over much of the Northern Hemisphere); keys to species; descriptions, chromosome numbers (when known); synonymies; identification, ecological, and distributional notes (including rarity status); and serviceable stippled line drawings for each species recognized. The illustrations were prepared with camera lucida and drawing tube and show features that are useful in identification, including drawings of leaf cross sections. The plants themselves are only sometimes rendered. The printed format is attractive and easy to use, particularly the large type size. My copy is the soft cover version, and the binding seems sturdy. This book of over 1000 pages stays open near the beginning, in the middle, and toward the end on a microscope bench in the laboratory where it is most likely to be consulted while identifying mosses.
The classification scheme followed is modern and reflects the status of knowledge through about 2000. (The author's preface is dated March 2003, and the text and bibliography cites taxonomic papers as recent as 2000.) Many of the numerous taxonomic innovations published in the 1980s and 1990s have been adopted, but when rejected the author is careful to provide a reason. For example, Lars Hedenäs's taxonomic concepts and redistribution of species in the Amblystegiaceae and other pleurocarpous families are followed, as are those of R. H. Zander for the Pottiaceae. Species on the British Red List, i.e., protected under the Wildlife and Countryside Act of 1981, are noted. British mosses receiving governmental stewardship under the Act are required to have common names, and a list of these are given, although Smith disavows their use because most are little applied (and therefore meaningless) beyond Britain and Ireland.
Almost all of the book is a distillation of the taxonomic experience of one author, but several other bryologists contributed treatments, including M. O. Hill (Sphagnum, 35 spp.), M. C. F. Corley (Campylopus Brid., 13 spp.), and D. F. Chamberlain (Tortula Hedw. p. p., 5 spp.; Protobryum bryoides (Dicks.) J. Guerra & M. J. Cano; Microbryum rectum (With.) R. H. Zander; Hennediella heimii (Hedw.) R. H. Zander [all of these eight species were under Pottia (Reichenb.) Fürnr.) in edition one]). Treatments of certain genera, Cynodontium Bruch & Schimp., <st2:sn w:st="on">Kiaeria</st2:sn> <st2:sn w:st="on">I.</st2:sn> Hagen, Schistidium Brid., and others contain taxonomic information useful to North American and other bryologists, and in particular illustrations and descriptions of Schistidium will prove helpful on this side of the Atlantic, given that species of this under-described genus are poorly understood. Information about genera not represented in North America, e.g., Cheilothela (Lindb.) Broth., Dialytrichia (Schimp.) Limpr., Rhynchostegiella (Schimp.) Limpr., is especially welcome. Many so-called Mediterranean species occur in southern England , and some of these not yet known from North America may be found in places along the West Coast. There is notable overlap between the moss flora of Britain and Ireland and North American coastal areas, especially northern ones. For this and many other reasons, MFBI is an important reference for studies of the North American bryoflora.
There are a disappointing number of typos throughout the book, which is surprising given the reputation of Cambridge University Press. I noted only a few errors of execution, for example the genus name Lescuraea Schimp. commemorates [Charles] Leo Lesquereux, Swiss-American bryologist and paleobotanist, and not Charles F. Lesquereux, "a North American Botanist," since the eponymous Lesquereux published an early work on mosses of Switzerland before emigrating to the United States. The family classification used is that of Buck and Goffinet (2000) not D. H. Vitt. Names of authors of subfamilies are not included, but authorities are given for names of sections of genera. In contrast to a practice of long standing, the stated linguistic source of a genus name does not include Latin or Greek root words when these are involved, but rather to what the name refers, for example, Octodiceras , "meaning 8 double horns based on the erroneous assumption that there were 8 divided peristome teeth." This is helpful, of course, but perhaps not as useful mnemonically as also knowing the root words. These small criticisms aside, I always judge a book of this sort by how it holds my attention when I crack it open at random and begin reading. By that measure this is a wonderful addition to my and any other bryologist's library.—Norton G. Miller, Biological Survey, New York State Museum, Albany, NY 12230.
Literature cited:
Buck, W. R. & B. Goffinet. 2000. Morphology and classification of mosses. In A. J. Shaw & B. Goffinet, eds. Bryophyte biology. Cambridge,UK .
Hill, M. O., C. D. Preston, & A. J. E. Smith, eds. 1992. Atlas of the bryophytes of Britain and Ireland. Vol. 2. Mosses (except Diplolepideae). Colchester.
Hill, M. O., C. D. Preston, & A. J. E. Smith, eds. 1994. Atlas of the bryophytes of Britain and Ireland. Vol. 3. Mosses (Diplolepideae). Colchester.
Hooker, W. J. & T. Taylor. 1818. Muscologia britannica; containing the mosses of Great Britain & Ireland systematically arranged and described. London.
Turner, D. 1804. Muscologiae hibernicae spicilegium. Yarmouth and London .
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Books Received
If you would like to review a book or books for PSB,
contact the Editor, stating the book of interest and
the date by which it would be reviewed (15 January,
15 April, 15 July or 15 October). E-mail psb@botany.org, call, or write as soon as you notice the book of interest in this list because they go quickly! - Editor
Abiotic Stresses: Plant Resistance Through Breeding and Molecular Approaches . Ashraf, Muhammad and John Charles Harris. 2005. ISBN 13-978-1-56022-965-0 (Paper US$89.95) 725pp. The Haworth Press, Inc. 10 Alice Street,Binghamton, NY13904-1580 .
The Biology of Soil: A Community and Ecosystem Approach. Bardgett. Richard. 2005 ISBN 0-19-852503-6 (Paper £24.99) 242 pp. Oxford University Press, GreatClarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP , United Kingdom .
Cecropia. Berg, Cornelis, C. and Pilar Franco Rosselli. 2005. ISBN 0-89327-461-5 (Cloth US$55.00) 236 pp. The New York Botanical Garden Press, 200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard ,Bronx, New York ,10458-5126.
Centennial History of the Carnegie Institution of Washington: Volume IV The Department of Plant Biology. Craig, Patricia. 2005. ISBN 0-521-83081-8. (Cloth US$80.00) 281 pp. CambridgeUniversity Press, 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211 .
Chia: Rediscovering a Forgotten Crop of the Aztecs. Ayerza, Ricardo and Wayne Coates. 2005. ISBN 0-8165-2488-2 (Paper US$14.95) 216 pp The University of Arizona Press, 355 S. Euclid, Ste. 103, Tucson, AZ 85719.
The Correspondence of Charles Darwin, Volume 14, 1866. Burkhardt, Frederick, Duncan Porter, Sheila Dean, Samantha Evans, Shelly Innes, Andrew Sclater, Alison Pearn, and Paul White ( eds). 2004. ISBN 0-521-84459-2 (Cloth US$120.00) 655 pp. Cambridge University Press, 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211 .
Crop Ferality and Volunteerism. Gressel, Jonathan, ed. 2005. ISBN 0-8493-2895-0 (Cloth US$ 169.95) 422 pp. CRC Press, Taylor and Francis Group, 6000 Broken Sound Parkway, NW, Suite 300, Boca Raton, FL 33487-2742.
Currants, Gooseberries, and Jostaberries: A Guide for Growers, Marketers, and Researchers in North America . Barnes, Danny L. 2005. ISBN 13-978-1-56022-297-2. (Paper US$34.95) 266pp. Food Products Press, 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580 .
Dyes from American Native Plants: A Practical Guide. Richards, Lynne and Ronald J. Tyrl. 2005. ISBN 0-88192-668-x (Cloth US$29.95) 328 pp. Timber Press, 133 S.W. Second Avenue, Suite 450, Portland, OR 97204-3527.
Ecological Methods in Forest Pest Management. Wainhouse, David. 2005 ISBN 0-19-850564-7 (Cloth £55.00) Oxford University Press, GreatClarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP, United Kingdom .
The Geographic Mosaic of Coevolution. Thompson, John N. 2005. ISBN 0-226-
79762-7 (Paper US$28.00) 443 pp. The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th
Street, Chicago, Il. 60637.
The Golden Spruce: A True Story of Myth, Madness, and Greed. Vaillant, John. 2005. ISBN 0-393-05887-5 (Cloth US$24.95) 255 pp. W.W. Norton & Company, Inc. 500 Fifth Avenue ,New York, NY 10110.
Guide to the Tendrillate Climbers of Costa Rican Mountains. Krings, Alexander and Richard T. Braham. 2005. ISBN 0-8138-0758-1 (Cloth US$99.99) 190 pp. Blackwell Publishing, 2121 State Avenue, Ames, IA 50014-8300 .
Handbook of Photosynthesis, 2nd ed. Pessarakli, Mohammad (ed.) 2005 ISBN 0-8247-5839-0 (Cloth US$159.95) 928 pp. CRC Press, Taylor & Francis Group, PO Box 409267, Atlanta, GA 30384-9267.
Hardy Gingers including Hedychium, Roscoea, and Zingiber. (Royal Horticultural Society Plant Collector Guide) Branney, T.M.E. 2005. ISBN 0-88192-677-9 (Cloth US$34.95) 304 pp. Timber Press, 133 S.W. Second Avenue, Suite 450, Portland, OR 97204-3527.
Hormones, Signals and Target Cells in Plant Development. Osborne, Daphne J. and Michael T. McManus. 2005. ISBN 0-521-33076-9 (Cloth US$110.00) 254 pp. Cambridge University Press, 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211 .
Hybrid Vegetable Development. Singh, P.K., S.K. Dasgupta, and S.K. Tripathi. 2005. ISBN 1-56022-119-4 (Paper US$59.95) 441pp Food Products Press, 10 Alice Street, Binghamton, NY 13904-1580 .
An Illustrated Chinese Materia Medica. Wu, Jing-Nuan. 2005. ISBN 0-19-514017-6 (Cloth US$175.00) 706pp. Oxford University Press, 198 Madison Ave., New York, NY 10016-4308 .
Intermountain Flora: Vascular Plant of the Intermountain West, U.S.A., Volume Two, Part B Subclass Dilleniidae. Holmgren, Noel H, Patricia K. Holmgren, and Arthur Cronquist. 2005. ISBN 0-89327-469-0 (Cloth US$100.00) 488 pp. The New York Botanical Garden Press, 200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard,Bronx, New York,10458-5126 .
Introduction to the Plant Life of SouthernCalifornia : Coast to Foothills. Rundel, Philip W. and Robert Gustafson. 2005. ISBN 0-520-23616-5 (Paper US$19.95) 316 pp. The University of California Press, 2120 Berkeley Way ,Berkeley, CA 94704.
The Jade Garden: New and Notable Plants from Asia. Wharton, Peter, Brent Hine, and Douglas Justice. 2005. ISBN 0-88192-705-8 (Cloth US$34.95) 228 pp. Timber Press, 133 S.W. Second Avenue, Suite 450, Portland, OR 97204-3527.
Marchantiidae. Bischler-Causse, Hélène, S. Robbert Gradstein, Suzanne Jovet-Ast, David G. Long, and Noris Salazar Allen. 2005. ISBN 0-89327-465-8 (Cloth US$65.00) 272 pp. The New York Botanical Garden Press, 200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard ,Bronx, NY 10458-5126.
Parsimony, Phylogeny, and Genomics. Albert, Victor A. 2005. ISBN 0-19-856493-7 (Cloth £49.95 ) 229 pp. Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford,OX2 6DP , United Kingdom .
Phylogeny and Evolution of Angiosperms. Soltis, Douglas E., Pamela S . Soltis, Peter K. Endress, and Mark W. Chase. 2005. ISBN 0-87893-817-6 (Paper US$59.95) 370 pp. Sinauer Associates, Inc., P.O. Box 407, Sunderland, MA 01375-0407 .
Pines: Drawings and Descriptions of the Genus Pinus, 2nd ed. Farjon, Aljos. 2005. ISBN 90-04-139168-8 (Cloth US$126.00) 225 pp. Brill Academic Publishers c/o Extenze Turpin Distribution Services Ltd, Biggleswade, UK .
Plant Evolution in the Mediterranean . Thompson, John D. 2005. ISBN 0-19-851534-0 (Paper £37.50) 293 pp. Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP , United Kingdom .
Seeds of Central America and SouthernMexico: The Economic Species. Lentz, David L. and Ruth Dickau. 2005. ISBN 0-89327-467-4 (Cloth US$65.00) 304 pp. The New YorkBotanical Garden Press, 200th Street and KazimiroffBoulevard, Bronx , NY 10458-5126 .
Siparunaceae. Renner, Susanne S. and Gerlinde Hausner. 2005. ISBN 0-89327-462-3 (Cloth US$62.00) 256pp. The New York Botanical Garden Press, 200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard ,Bronx, NY 10458-5126.
Sonoran Desert Plants: An Ecological Atlas. Turner, Raymond M., Janice E. Bowers, and Tony L. Burgess. 2005. ISBN 0-8165-2519-6 (Paper US$39.95) 528 pp. The University of Arizona Press, 355 S. Euclid Ste. 103. Tucson, AZ 85719 .
The Splendid Sansevieria: An Account of the Species. Chahinian, B. Juan. 2005. ISBN 987-43-9250-9 (Flex US$34.95) 178 pp. B. Juan Chahinian, P.O. Box 10944, Naples, Florida 34101, chahinian@earthlink.net.
Tococa (Melastomataceae) Michelangeli, Fabián. 2005. ISBN 0-89327-466-6 (Cloth US$30.00) 120 pp. The New York Botanical Garden Press, 200th Street and Kazimiroff Boulevard, Bronx, NY 10458-5126.
Tropical Rainforests: Past, Present, and Future. Bermingham, Eldredge, Christorpher W. Dick and Craig Moritz (eds) 2005. ISBN 0-226-04468-8 (Paper US$45.00) 672 pp. The University of Chicago Press, 1427 E. 60th Street, Chicago, Il 60637 .
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