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Volume 13, No. 3-4
July - December 1999
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EDITORIAL COMMITTEE

The Flora of North America Editorial Committee is pleased to welcome two new members: Dr. Mary Barkworth, Utah State University, Logan, Utah; and Dr. John Kartesz of the North Carolina Botanical Garden, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, NC.

Discussions with Mary over the past several months made clear that the Manual of North American Grasses that she and her collaborators have been assembling over the past several years and the proposed treatment of the grasses for the Flora of North America would not differ in significant ways. Collaboration on a single treatment of the grasses for North America, rather than slightly different works by mostly the same authors for two separate treatments, made imminently practical as well as economic sense. The minor differences in format and range of coverage between the two projects were easily resolved and we are very happy to report that we can now concentrate the efforts of the entire FNA community towards producing a single treatment of the grasses of North America. Mary will therefore head the Editorial Center for the two volumes of grasses for the Flora. The grass volumes will have dual title pages clearly indicating their status as volumes 24 and 25 of the Flora of North America and as The Manual of North American Grasses and will be credited to Mary E. Barkworth, Kathleen M. Capels, and Linda A. Vorobik, the taxon editors.

Similar discussion with John Kartesz since May of 1999 indicates that The Biota of North America Program and Flora of North America projects overlap in some areas, but also complement each other in ways that make collaboration and sharing of information of immense benefit to both, particularly anyone interested in North American plants. For years John has been compiling his very useful and widely utilized synonymized checklist of North American Plants and more recently has been cataloging and mapping distribution information gathered from the literature and from specimens. He is now able to produce geopolitical maps to state and province level for all the plants in North America, and to the state level for about 90 percent of the states. John has also maintained a checklist of the plants of North America. As a member of the Flora of North America committee, he will head the FNA Phytogeographical.

 

Center. FNA will also adopt his checklist as its backbone for names to be accounted for in the Flora. In his capacity as head of the phytogeographical center, John will provide authors with preliminary maps and distribution information for treatments not already finished or in progress. Authors will communicate directly with John on discrepancies and new findings in distributions, thereby enhancing both BONAP's and FNA's distribution information. As heads of these two editorial centers, Mary Barkworth and John Kartesz will serve as members of the FNA Management Committee.

CENTERS

BRIT

The BRIT Editorial Center is preparing the treatments of the composites and the legumes for FNA. Current effort is concentrated on the composites, coordinated by the Compositae Editorial Committee (CompEd), consisting of Ted Barkley at BRIT, Luc Brouillet at the University of Montreal, and John Strother at the University of California, Berkeley. Manuscripts are being received from contributors and are in line for processing, but there are several orphan genera yet in need of authors. The treatment of the family should be finished by 2004 and will be published in volumes 19, 20, and 21, as the FNA is currently planned. It is expected that the BRIT Editorial Center will achieve adequate long-term support within the next year to sustain its program.

Hunt Institute

Since the start of the FNA project, the Hunt Institute at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh has served as the Bibliographic Center for FNA under Bob Kiger. As part of the restructuring of the project, Hunt now houses an editorial center which will process treatments of vascular plants for various volumes, from the author's first submission to the final proofs from OUP. Hunt is currently handling Volume 26, Liliales and Orchidales, and soon will start processing treatments for Volume 5.

Bob Kiger is continuing his duties as bibliographic editor and as taxon editor for the Liliales and Gentianales. Three new staff members have been added:


Fred Utech, Principal Research Scientist; Mary Ann Schmidt, ELS, Technical Editor; and Elizabeth Kiser, Editorial Coordinator (and Managing Editor of this newsletter).

Fred Utech joined the FNA staff in December. For several years he has been a special advisor for the Liliales, and he will continue in this capacity at Hunt. His botanical expertise will be a great asset in the writing and reviewing of treatments. Fred's research interest is in the Liliaceae, particularly taxonomy, anatomy, cytology, and life history. He has done fieldwork throughout North America, primarily in the southeast, northwest, and Great Lakes regions, as well as in Europe and east Asia.

Mary Ann Schmidt began work with FNA in October. Though her background is primarily in paleontology, her extensive experience in scientific editing, publishing, and print production makes her well suited to her tasks at FNA. Mary Ann is responsible for applying the specialized formatting, style, and usage standards to the manuscripts of botanical taxa.

Beth Kiser has been with the project since August. Her duties include tracking FNA treatments, contacting potential authors and reviewers, and working with current authors, reviewers, and other FNA staff to ensure that manuscript processing proceeds efficiently and on schedule from initial submission through page and galley proofs. As managing editor for this newsletter, any news items may be submitted to her. Beth also assists Mary Ann in checking manuscripts for content and format.

Mary Ann and Beth were very fortunate to have had a week of training and organizing with Helen Jeude (Senior Technical Editor, now supported from the Hunt Institute) in October. Helen gave up seven warm, sunny days at her home in Texas to brave the cold, gray dampness of Pittsburgh, just to help the new FNA office get up and running. Helen oriented Mary Ann and Beth to the whole FNA process, and the office has been operating more and more smoothly ever since.

In addition to their work on the actual FNA volumes, Mary Ann and Beth, along with four other members of the Hunt Institute staff, are working to improve the structure and design of the FNA Web site. Their final recommendations are nearly complete and soon will be submitted to the Management Committee for approval. Please check the site for improvements in the coming months.

The FNA center at the Hunt Institute should help ensure that the project moves along more efficiently and, we hope, more swiftly.

NYBG

Volumes 27, 28, and 29 of the Flora have been given the alternative title "Bryophyte Flora of North America" (BFNA). The project includes about 75 the authors and 11 taxon editors. The new FNA Editorial Center for Bryophytes is located at the Buffalo Museum of Science. Manuscripts should be sent

to new lead editor, Richard H. Zander, Buffalo Museum of Science, 1020 Humboldt Pkwy, Buffalo, NY 14211 USA. A separate FNA Bryophyte Data Center under Barbara Thiers is hosted by the New York Botanical Garden, featuring a Web site (http://www.nybg.org/bsci/bfna/) for provisional publication of treatments and information assisting authors.

The first volume is intended to be ready for publication in three years, and the remaining two volumes at the end of six years. Funds are being arranged for artwork. Sample illustrations have been made for the genera Molendoa and Tuerckheimia and may be examined at the Web site. There are presently 63 generic treatments in 25 families provisionally published on the Web, and the Editorial Center has in hand the following treatments: H. Crum: Dicranella, Platydictya, Tripterocladium; I. Granzouw-de la Cerda: Anomodon; R. Ireland: Dicranodontium, Herzogiella, Isopterygiopsis, Isopterygium, Plagio-theciaceae; A. Newton: Pterobryaceae; A. Potemkin: Scapania; W. Reese: Jae-gerina; I. Sastre: Neckeropsis, Neckeraceae.

Intermountain Herbarium, USU

Mary Barkworth, head of the Editorial Center for the Manual of North American Grasses (FNA volumes 24 and 25), reports that the Manual will include vegetative keys in order to provide technical support for taxonomists. The UTC also has a growing database of over 49,000 records, nearly 48,000 of which are from the FNA area. While identifications cannot be guaranteed, the database could be helpful to those preparing distribution maps or treatments and in suggesting specimens that should be examined. UTC has made a point of entering all their specimens of taxa that anyone is especially interested in. Naturally, the more requests for information they receive, the longer it will take to process those requests. Any request that is accompanied by an offer of payment for UTC's work will have priority.

Finances have been an unfortunate obstacle to the project in recent months. Mary Barkworth and Linda Vorobik were quite busy with fundraising this past fall, and while they were able to secure $158,000 from various sources (with additional requests pending), a substantial amount is still needed if the Manual is to be completed in three years as planned. Fundraising, along with Drs. Barkworth and Vorobik's teaching responsibilities, will slow work on the Manual in the coming year.

The budget needs for the Manual project over the next three years are as follows: Personnel (salaries and benefits), $256,336; Consultant (Illustrator), $203,091; Supplies, $3650; and Travel, $3491. Total direct costs: $466,568. Indirect costs have been waived. The total amount still needed after subtracting the funds already promised is $408,568. A sizeable portion of this must be secured in the near future in order for the project to stay on schedule.

A Manual newsletter was published on 16 November 1999 and was mailed to most of those directly involved with the Manual. Anyone interested in viewing the newsletter on the Web can visit biology.usu.edu (herbarium)


ELECTRONICS RESOURCES

FNA Web Site

The FNA Web site is moving from the Missouri Botanical Garden to the Harvard University Herbaria. As with other aspects of the FNA project, the responsibility for maintenance of the web pages will be shared between the Hunt Institute (home page and front-end pages), the Missouri Botanical Garden (FNA general information, including family and author assignments, database maintenance, and maintenance of treatments) and the Harvard Herbaria (maintenance of the web server, interaction on database development, and maintenance of treatments).

As part of the move, the presentation and formatting of the FNA treatments on the web will be changing somewhat. Hong Song (MO) has been working on programs to parse the descriptions into a database to make limited keyword searching possible. Parsing is still rather difficult because of the inherent morphological differences between taxonomic groups and the differences in which characters are used in descriptions in otherwise comparable ranks. Bracketed keys, which are easier to display and use on the web, will replace the indented keys. Lists of names will be displayed alphabetically within a taxon to make them easier to find, and to make it easier to go from the name to the description.

Most recently, Hong has been preparing volume 22 for presentation on the Web and hopes to have it accessible before this newsletter appears. After volume 22, the plan is to make unpublished treatments available as soon as the author and the taxon editor find them acceptable. Unpublished treatments will be marked as provisional until published to indicate that they are in the process of review. Authors and users will no longer have to wait months or years for treatments to become available, but instead will have access to them almost as soon as they are written.

The Flora of North America (FNA) project is a cooperative program to produce a comprehensive account of the plants of North America north of Mexico. The FNA Newsletter, edited at the Hunt Institute and printed at the Missouri Botanical Garden, is published semi-annually by the Flora of North American Association to communicate news about the FNA project and other topics of interest to North American floristic researchers. For more information, please see the FNA Web site http://hua.huh.harvard.edu/FNA/

Readers are invited to send appropriate news items to:
Elizabeth A. Polen, Newsletter Editor
Flora of North America
Hunt Institute, Carnegie Mellon University
5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213-3890 Items can also be sent by e-mail to: kiser@andrew.cmu.edu.

FNA FTP Site

Until now, the Flora of North America project has been distributing manuscripts almost entirely in hard-copy format, mostly because of the inherent difficulties of working with various word processing programs, but also partly because of the varying levels of comfort participants at all levels have felt with computers. Recent developments in making word processing software more intercompatible and the now almost universal use of new technology have brought us to the point where we can move into the New Year by taking advantage of the recent advances in file sharing and the ease and speed (and savings!) of moving manuscripts over the Internet.

The FNA server in the Harvard Herbaria will also house an ftp site where manuscripts can be deposited and picked up. Hong Song has set up the ftp site and has created separate directories, named simply Authors, Reviewers, and Managers, to handle documents at all stages of processing. The directories will be login- and password-protected. Instructions will be provided for anyone who has not used, or is not completely comfortable with, ftp to transfer documents. Manuscripts should be saved in: Word 97 or lower and given a .doc extension; WordPerfect with a .wpd extension; or as text files with a .txt extension.

File-naming protocols have been developed to clearly indicate each stage of the manuscript as it passes through the editorial process. In its simplest form, the naming scheme is as follows:

Taxon01 — author's original submission, accepted by taxon editor; ready for processing
Taxon02 — initial editing (if any), standard formatting for processing, and initial querying complete; ready for review
Taxon02rev — same as 02, except internal queries not related to reviewers' concerns are not included; this version put on ftp site for fetching by reviewers; also posted provisionally on Web site for general access, to be replaced by finished treatment when relevant volume has been published
Taxon03 — taxon editing (including incorporation of regional and taxonomic review results) complete; ready for technical editing
Taxon04 — technical editing complete; ready for final formatting
Taxon05 — final formatting complete; ready for publishing

Taxon name may be a family name, genus name, or lower level group. For example: Cypripedium03.doc, or Burmannia-ceae05.doc.

We anticipate some initial difficulties and discrepancies in comfort levels using ftp, but we will resolve the difficulties and provide detailed instructions to help everyone become comfortable. We suspect that local experts, ranging from students to computer specialists, can also be called upon to provide assistance.


FUNDING AWARDS

$500,000 Grant Funds Research and Recovery Plans for New England's Rarest Plants

The New England Wild Flower Society (NEWFS) has recently received a five-year, $500,000 grant from an anonymous foundation to write Research and Recovery Plans for 100 of New England's rarest plants. This is one of the largest grants ever given for plant conservation in the U.S. and is the first grant to develop conservation plans specifically for this region's rarest plant species.

In 1997 the New England Plant Conservation Program (NEPCoP), an alliance of government agencies, private conservation organizations, and professional botanists working to end plant endangerment throughout New England, published the "Flora Conservanda: New England," the first multi-state list that documents a region's rare and endangered plants. This list identified 57 globally rare New England plants and 273 regionally rare plants. Conservation plans under the grant will cover 100 species in these two categories.

By design, none of the Research and Recovery Plans are for plants on the Federal Endangered Species List, but each plan will be similar to those written for plant species on the federal list. Plans will include a description of the general status, distribution, and range of the plant in North America and New England; the species biology; the current and historical status of each New England occurrence; the goals for the plant in New England; and the recommended conservation actions. Once the Plans have been developed, they will be reviewed by NEPCoP's Regional Advisory Council and State Task Forces before implementation.

Three examples of rare natives that will be studied are Scirpus longii (Long's bulrush), a globally rare plant that has 15 occurrences in New England, including one of the largest populations in the world along the Saco River in Maine; the elusive orchid, Triphora trianthophora (three-birds orchid), occurring in ten locations in New Hampshire with fewer populations in Maine, Vermont, and Massachusetts; and an endemic, Eupatorium leucolepis var. novae-angliae (New England boneset), found along coastal plain ponds in only nine locations in Massachusetts and six locations in Rhode Island.

These Research and Recovery Plans are part of a long-term effort by the NEWFS to address the needs of plant conservation in New England.

Founded in 1900, the New England Wild Flower Society is the oldest plant conservation organization in the United States and the only regional native plant society.

HERBARIA

Index Herbariorum and Plant Specialists Index

Updated information for 2,010 herbaria in 134 countries listed in Index Herbariorum, edition 8, and its supplements (published in Taxon) is available

for searching by institution, city, state, acronym, staff member, correspondent, and research specialty ( http://www.nybg.org/bsci/ih/
ih.html
). Telephone and fax numbers, e-mail addresses, and URLs are included.

Note that the Index is fully searchable on research specialty, so it also serves as a Plant Specialists Index.

Please review the entry for your herbarium. Send updates and corrections to: pholmgren@nybg.org

Updated information is available for all herbaria registered in Index Herbariorum in the following countries: Alderney, Angola, Armenia, Australia, Austria, Azerbaijan, Barbados, Belarus, Belize, Bolivia, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Botswana, Brunei Darussalam, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Cayman Islands, Central African Republic, Costa Rica, Croatia, Cyprus, Denmark, Fiji, French Guiana, French Polynesia, Greenland, Guadeloupe, Guam, Guatemala, Guernsey, Guyana, Honduras, Iceland, Jersey Islands, Lebanon, Lesotho, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malawi, Mauritius, Moldova, Mozambique, Namibia, Nepal, New Caledonia, Norway, Oman, Panama, Puerto Rico, Seychelles, Singapore, Solomon Islands, Sri Lanka, Suriname, Swaziland, Togo, Trinidad, U.S.A., Vietnam, Virgin Islands, and Yugoslavia.

Updated information is available for 75_99% of the herbaria in Argentina, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Cuba, Czech Republic, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Indonesia, Ireland, Italy, Korea, Mexico, Netherlands, Papua New Guinea, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Tanzania, Uganda, and Uruguay.

Updated information is available for 50_74% of the herbaria in Armenia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Egypt, Ethiopia, Hungary, India, Iran, Isle of Man, Israel, Jamaica, Japan, Kenya, Latvia, Malaysia, Morocco, New Zealand, Nicaragua, Pakistan, Poland, Portugal, Republic of China, Romania, Senegal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Thailand, Turkey, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.

Updated information is available for 25_49% of the herbaria in Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Ghana, Iraq, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, Paraguay, Peru, Philippines, Russia, Sudan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, and U.K.

Updated information is available for 1_24% of the herbaria in Georgia, Myanmar, and Zambia.

No updated information is available for the herbaria in Afghanistan, Algeria, Bangladesh, Benin, Bhutan, Burundi, Gabon, Haiti, Ivory Coast, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Liberia, Libya, Madagascar, Malta, Mongolia, Niger, People's Republic of China, Réunion, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Tajikistan, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, Vanuatu, and Zaire.

This file will be updated every few months, so please send updates and corrections to Patricia K. Holmgren (pholmgren@nybg.org) or Noel H. Holmgren (nholmgren@nybg.org).


OTHER FLORA PROJECTS

Atlas of the Vascular Plants of Wyoming

High-resolution dot maps for the distribution of more than 2,800 taxa are available online. They are served as .pdf files which can be read with Adobe Acrobat Reader, available on the Web page. High-quality copies can be produced with a laserjet printer. The atlas is based on label data from nearly 200,000 herbarium specimens (ca. 9,000 localities) housed at the RM. It was created using ArcView. The atlas may be cited as: T. W. Chumley, B. E. Nelson, and R. L. Hartman, 1998, Atlas of the Vascular Plants of Wyoming (http://www.rmh.uwyo.edu) [1999, Sep 16], University of Wyoming, Laramie. Eighty percent of the collections are from fieldwork conducted in the past 20 years; information from older specimens (ca. 80,000) is now being captured. Periodic updates are planned; eventually the records will be linked to the dots and the database will go online. Questions concerning specific records may be sent to rhartman@uwyo.edu. One goal of this project is to make distributional data available to authors of Flora of North America. Currently the atlas is being served from the University of Texas at Austin where Chumley is a doctoral student of Robert K. Jansen.

On the Trail of Rafinesque

FNA taxon editor John W. Thieret (Northern Kentucky University) and FNA reviewer and author David M. Brandenburg (The Dawes Arboretum, Newark, Ohio) retraced a botanical excursion that Constantine Rafinesque (1783_1840) took in 1823 in central and south-central Kentucky. Rafinesque's itinerary was outlined in his 1836 autobiography, Life of Travels. For him, it was a two-month journey on foot; for DMB and JWT, it took a week by car, in July 1999. They began by examining original Rafinesque materials in the library of Transylvania University in Lexington, where Rafinesque taught from 1819 to 1826. From Lexington they headed south to Danville, Stanford, Hall's Gap, Somerset, Cumberland Falls, Barboursville, and Pine Mountain. They returned to Lexington via Hazel Patch, Mount Vernon, and Crab Orchard.

Of the Cumberland Falls region in his time, Rafinesque wrote: "After Somerset my way was thro' wild and hilly places, nearly unsettled, having some times to go 14 miles without meeting a Cottage. I crossed Rockcastle R. at the mouth, and visited the... falls of the R. Cumberland, which few travellers have seen."

JWT and DMB note that Cumberland Falls region is now a tourist spot, complete with created lakes, motor boats, a thriving lumber industry, gift shops and their kitsch, multi-pump gas stations with long lines of cars, and signs beseeching the local populace and visitors to refrain from dumping garbage into the Cumberland River (the garbage accumulates at the Falls, where bobbing white-plastic bottles are depressingly in evidence). At 68 feet high, the Falls are quite impressive. The area also boasts a diverse forest that includes Stewartia ovata and Magnolia macrophylla, and some common plants that still bear Rafinesquian names: Acalypha rhomboidea, Ampelamus, Aureolaria, Erechtites hieracifolia, Osmorhiza, and Ratibida. Rafinesque would not have seen Japanese beetles or kudzu, both of which are prolific there now, the latter impressively shrouding entire mountainsides.

DMB was once a student at Transylvania University. He and JWT have had a long-time interest in Rafinesque. Both DMB and JWT used the trip as an opportunity for field study of various taxa, including accounts of those they are preparing for FNA.

MEETINGS

The Natural Areas Association's 27th Annual Conference will be 16-20 October 2000 in St. Louis, Missouri at the Regal Riverfront Hotel, just as short walk from the Gateway Arch National Monument.

Managing the Mosaic: Connecting People and Natural Diverstiy in the 21st Century is the conference theme. Bicentennial celebration of the Lewis and Clark expedition is underway, and Dr. Daniel Botkin, our banquet speaker, will discuss the historical and future implications of the explorers' journey. Plenary speakers include Dr. Peter Raven, Director of the Missouri Botanical Garden, and Dr. William Burch, Yale University. Plenary speakers and concurrent sessions will address aspects of biodiversity and how humans fit into the new century of management.

The conference will include symposia, contributed papers and poster sessions, social events, and business meetings. Field trips include excursions to various natural areas in the Ozarks, cave visits, float trips on the Mississippi River,and walks on Missouri prairies.

The conference is hosted by the Natural Areas Association and the Missouri Department of Conservation.

Registration will be approximately $175. To receive a registration packet of the call for papers, please contact: Natural Areas Conference 2000, Kate Leary, Conference Coordinator, Missouri Department of Conservation, P.O. Box 180, Jefferson City, MO 65102-0180; phone: (573) 751-4115 ext. 183; E-mail: learyk@mail.conservation.state.mo.us. Visit the Web site at www.conservation.state.mo.us/nac.

DEATHS

JOSEPH A. EWAN, naturalist and botanical historian, was born in Philadephia on 24 October 1909. He died peacefully on 5 December 1999 in Mandeville, LA, with Nesta, his wife of 67 years, by his side.

Professor Ewan graduated from the University of California, Berkeley in 1934 and was a research assistant to Willis Linn Jepson in graduate school. He taught at the University of Colorado from 1937_1944 and became a professor at Tulane University in 1947. He retired in 1977 as Ida Richardson Professor of Botany Emeritus and remained at Tulane until 1986.

Early in his career, Professor Ewan made major scientific contributions in the study of Delphinium. He spent a year during WWII in South America with the Cinchona Survey, locating new sources of quinine. He was a Guggenheim Fellow in 1954_1955 and later received curatorial appointments with the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He was also an early member of the Society for the Bibliography of Natural History in London and received its Founders Medal in 1977.

As a leading historian of American botany, particularly the 17th_19th centuries, Professor Ewan and Nesta, often his collaborator, published over 400 books, essays, and reviews. The Ewan Collection, purchased by the Missouri Botanical Garden in 1986, contains over 6,000 titles. A Guide to the Ewan Papers was published by MBG in 1997 and is available online.

Professor Ewan's health—though not his intellect, memory, or sense of humor—deteriorated after a stroke in December of 1996. He asked his family to tell everyone good-bye for him. His family planted a tree in his memory at a small, private gathering following his death.

Professor Ewan is survived by Nesta and their three daughters, Kathleen, Dorothy, and Marj. Any messages may be sent to the family in care of: Kathleen and Richard Harris, 820 Austerlitz, Mandeville, LA 70448. Nesta and Joe always enjoyed receiving notes and messages from friends and colleagues, and Nesta would surely still appreciate this now that she is without him. Her direct address is: Nesta Ewan, Heritage Manor, 1820 Causeway Approach, Mandeville, LA 70471.


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