227 TAXON 67 (1) • February 2018: 227–232 Plant Systematics World Version of Record PLANT SYSTEMATICS WORLD Edited by Vicki Funk CHARLES ROBERT (BOB) GUNN (1927–2015) Charles Robert (Bob) Gunn was born 1 June 1927 in Columbus, Ohio. His parents were Harriett (née Miles) and Edward Stanley Gunn. In 1953, he married Betty Johnston, and they had two children, Laura Lynn Leff and Steven Robert Gunn. He died 26 September 2015 in Asheville, North Carolina. Bob received his Bachelor of Science degree from Iowa State University in 1950. The Ross Seed Company of Louisville, Kentucky hired him as a seed analyst, and a year later he became a Registered Seed Technologist (no. 11). Studying at night, he earned a Master of Science degree from the University of Louisville, Kentucky in 1958. His thesis was entitled, A Flora of Bernheim Forest, Bullitt County, Kentucky . In 1959, the Ross Seed Company was closed, and he was accepted into the Ph.D. program in botany at Iowa State University. His doctoral advisor was Duane Isely. He worked three- quarters time as a Purity Supervisor at the Iowa State University Seed Laboratory, and was a graduate student one-quarter time. He graduated in 1965, and his doctoral dissertation was entitled The Vicia americana complex (Leguminosae) . After completing all requirements for his doctoral degree and prior to graduation, he was hired by the United States Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service’s (USDA-ARS) New Crops Research Division, Beltsville, Maryland and appointed curator of the USDA reference seed collection. The collection was renamed the U.S. National Seed Herbarium (BARC), and is now located at the USDA-ARS U.S. National Arboretum, Washington, D.C. It has more than 140,000 collections of seeds and fruits, and is, without doubt, the world’s largest, most comprehensive seed herbarium. The collection includes vouchers for more than 50,000 plant introductions into the U.S.A., and has fruit and seed samples of 412 families accepted by Cronquist and lacks samples of just 6 Cronquist families. Bob expanded the scope of the collection, which was strictly agricultural, to all families and genera of seed plants and transformed it from a reference collection to one which served as both a reference collection and for research. He prepared lists of families and genera not represented in the collection, and wherever Bob Gunn with a selection of fruits and seeds from the U.S. National Seed Herbarium (BARC). (Photo courtesy of Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) DOI https://doi.org/10.12705/671.33
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PLANT SYSTEMATICS WORLD
Edited by Vicki Funk
CHARLES ROBERT (BOB) GUNN (1927–2015)
Charles Robert (Bob) Gunn was born 1 June 1927 in Columbus, Ohio. His parents were Harriett (née Miles) and Edward Stanley Gunn. In 1953, he married Betty Johnston, and they had two children, Laura Lynn Leff and Steven Robert Gunn. He died 26 September 2015 in Asheville, North Carolina.
Bob received his Bachelor of Science degree from Iowa State University in 1950. The Ross Seed Company of Louisville, Kentucky hired him as a seed analyst, and a year later he became a Registered Seed Technologist (no. 11). Studying at night, he earned a Master of Science degree from the University of Louisville, Kentucky in 1958. His thesis was entitled, A Flora of Bernheim Forest, Bullitt County, Kentucky. In 1959, the Ross Seed Company was closed, and he was accepted into the Ph.D. program in botany at Iowa State University. His doctoral advisor was Duane Isely. He worked three-quarters time as a Purity Supervisor at the Iowa State University Seed Laboratory, and was a graduate student one-quarter time. He
graduated in 1965, and his doctoral dissertation was entitled The Vicia americana complex (Leguminosae).
After completing all requirements for his doctoral degree and prior to graduation, he was hired by the United States Department of Agriculture–Agricultural Research Service’s (USDA-ARS) New Crops Research Division, Beltsville, Maryland and appointed curator of the USDA reference seed collection. The collection was renamed the U.S. National Seed Herbarium (BARC), and is now located at the USDA-ARS U.S. National Arboretum, Washington, D.C. It has more than 140,000 collections of seeds and fruits, and is, without doubt, the world’s largest, most comprehensive seed herbarium. The collection includes vouchers for more than 50,000 plant introductions into the U.S.A., and has fruit and seed samples of 412 families accepted by Cronquist and lacks samples of just 6 Cronquist families. Bob expanded the scope of the collection, which was strictly agricultural, to all families and genera of seed plants and transformed it from a reference collection to one which served as both a reference collection and for research. He prepared lists of families and genera not represented in the collection, and wherever
Bob Gunn with a selection of fruits and seeds from the U.S. National Seed Herbarium (BARC). (Photo courtesy of Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)
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he went he searched for, found, and acquired seeds and fruits of many missing families and genera. More than 50% of the genera in each family, except Orchidaceae, are represented in the collection.
Bob was a world authority on the identification of seeds and fruits applying traditional techniques of whole plant morphology and embryology without using other plant parts. His studies focused on agriculturally important families and genera of the Convolvulaceae, Fabaceae, Fumariaceae, Papaveraceae, Solanaceae, and various noxious weeds. He was frequently called upon to identify seeds and fruits of germplasm accessions, in commerce, importation, and criminal investigations, and from ecological and archeologi-cal studies. He was an early adopter of computer technology for recording, storing, and managing his data and expert systems for the identification of seeds and fruits.
Bob was the first person to coordinate the scientific and com-mon names of seeds in commerce. He was advisor to the Seed Standardization Laboratory of the USDA Agricultural Marketing Service for the names used in the U.S. Federal Seed Act, Chairman of the Nomenclature Committee of the Association of Official Seed Analysts, and Vice Chairman of the Nomenclature Committee of the International Seed Testing Association. He worked to ensure that these bodies all used the same scientific names for seeds, thus significantly facilitating international commerce in seeds.
Bob’s two long-term goals were to study, describe, illustrate, and develop identification tools for: (a) all the genera of an agri-culturally important family, and (b) all the families of seed plants. He considered the Fabaceae and Poaceae to be the most important agricultural plant families. He reviewed each family, and decided to study the Fabaceae because he felt that there was more variation in their seed and fruit morphology than in Poaceae, which would make their study and identification easier and more interesting. In 1978, Bob attended the first International Legume Conference at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew. The principal goal for the conference was to develop a generic and intrafamilial classification of the family. Bob realized that this would stimulate research on the family including his own studies on their seeds and fruits. He developed a terminol-ogy for legume seeds and fruits. His studies were organized into the three traditional subfamilies: Caesalpinioideae, Mimosoideae, and Faboideae. The Caesalpinioideae and Mimosoideae studies were published in 1991 and 1984, respectively. Bob retired from ARS in 1992, and continued his study of the Faboideae in retire-ment. The Faboideae study was published in 2003. It was conducted using Dallwitz’s DELTA software system, the Caesalpinioideae and Mimosoideae data and images were converted to DELTA format, and the unified INTKEY database was published as a CD-ROM in 2000 and online in 2003. After completion of the generic legume data, Bob started collecting seed and fruit data for the families of seed plants. An INTKEY database with images of all families was published online in 2006.
At the first International Congress of Systematic and Evolutionary Biology in 1973, one conclusion of the legume sec-tion was that a newsletter was needed to facilitate communication among legume researches. Bob published the first number of the The Bean Bag newsletter in May 1975. His motto for The Bean Bag was, “a newsletter to promote communication among research scientists concerned with the systematics of the Leguminosae/Fabaceae”. He was senior editor of the newsletter for many years until his retirement in 1992.
Following the first International Legume Conference in 1978, Bob developed a database of all supraspecific names published
since 1753 and all accepted genera and synonyms for his own legume research. He was a founding board member in 1985 of the International Legume Database and Information Service (ILDIS). His supraspecific database was adopted as the top module for the ILDIS database.
In 1979, Bob was requested by USDA Agricultural Research Service and Animal and Plant Inspection Service (APHIS) to estab-lish a Secretariat and database systems for evaluation of foreign noxious weeds. He selected and evaluated exotic weeds not in the United States or not widely distributed in the United States for the Technical Committee to Evaluate Noxious Weeds (TCENW), and was to alert the TCENW to any changes in the status of exotic noxious weeds. He was influential in the selection of the species and genera that were included in the first version of the Federal Noxious Weed List (FNWL), which are the species and genera whose entry into the United States is prohibited. He also prepared tools for the port-of-entry inspectors to identify the seeds and fruits of the spe-cies and genera included in the FNWL.
In 1988 Bob was appointed Secretary of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy Subcommittee 4A on Registration of Names. There was a wide range of opinions among the members of the subcommittee on how to implement registration of names. Bob organized those divergent ideas into the simple concept of reg-istration as another condition for valid publication, and four uncom-plicated proposals, based on that idea, to modify the International code of botanical nomenclature were proposed and adopted at the Yokohama International Botanical Congress in 1993.
During the studies of the legume genera, a new genus of African legumes was discovered. Swartzia Schreb. had been considered to be a tropical genus of ca. 180 species consisting of two African species with the remainder all confined to the Neotropics. The two African species were transferred to the new genus Bobgunnia J.H.Kirkbr. & Wiersema, leaving Swartzia an endemic neotropical genus. There being already two genera named Gunnia, Bob was consulted about the name of the new genus honoring him, and he picked Bobgunnia as the name that he preferred.
Personnel of the Department of Botany, Smithsonian Institution asked Bob to identify seeds collected from beaches near Palm Beach, Florida. He found his avocation, which was the study of tropical seeds carried by ocean currents to temperate beaches. In 1976, he published World guide to tropical drift seeds and fruits, which led to drift-seed collectors from all over the world sending him seeds for identification and study. In 1995, he was instrumental in the establishment of The drifting seed newsletter, and was co-editor in 1995 and 1996. He donated his large, diverse collection of drift seeds to the Maryland State Seed Laboratory, Annapolis, Maryland.
Joseph H. Kirkbride, Jr.,1 John H. Wiersema2 & Steven R. Gunn31 Department of Botany, NMNH - MRC 166, Smithsonian Insti-
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“YOU’LL HEAR THE MUSIC IN THE BELL” – STANWYN GERALD SHETLER (1933–2017)
Dr. Stanwyn G. Shetler passed away in Leesburg, Virginia on 4 December 2017 from complications related to Parkinson’s disease. He was born on 11 October 1933 in Johnstown, Pennsylvania and raised in rural Hollsopple about 15 miles southwest of Johnstown. He graduated from Johnstown Mennonite High School (now Johnstown Christian School), which his father Bishop Sanford G. Shetler, a prominent leader in the Mennonite community, had founded and directed as principal. According to Stan, his interest in natural history began in elementary school with bird watching and it was encouraged by a science teacher and fostered by his mother. Although he spent his professional career as a Botanist and museum administrator, Ornithology remained a life-long avocation.
In 1951, Stan matriculated at his father’s alma mater Eastern Mennonite College (now University) in Harrisonburg, Virginia. Two years later, he transferred to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York where he received his B.S. (1955) and M.S. (1958) degrees. Stan’s thesis focused on the ecology of Campanula americana L. (Campanulaceae) in the Laurel Hill region of the Allegheny Mountains in southcentral Pennsylvania. Stan credits Robert T. Clausen, chair of his graduate committee, with first bringing his attention to Campanula and to introducing him to statistical analysis and reasoning in taxonomy. Not surprisingly, when Stan moved to the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor to pursue his doctorate he chose to work with Rogers McVaugh, who also had an interest in Campanulaceae. McVaugh encouraged Stan to focus on the circumboreal C. rotundifolia L. complex. Appropriately, Stan pursued fieldwork in southern Alaska in the summer of 1959 and in western North America, especially the Rocky Mountains, in the summer of 1960.
In 1962, Stan accepted a position as an Assistant Curator in the Department of Botany, National Museum of Natural History (N.M.N.H.), Smithsonian Institution. He arrived in Washington, D.C. without his degree in hand and it was not until 1979 that he completed the requirements for a Ph.D., only defending his dis-sertation shortly before McVaugh retired. The lack of a doctorate, however, did not prevent Stan from making several important con-tributions to systematic Botany early in his career.
At the Smithsonian Stan was responsible for North American plants and initially he focused on the subjects that had interested him in graduate school. In July and August 1963, he returned to Alaska to collect and visited the remote Baird and Schwatka mountains at the southwestern end of the Brooks Range. The following year he attended the 10th International Botanical Congress in Edinburgh, which in hindsight proved pivotal for his career. The editors of the Flora Europaea (1964–1993) announced at the Congress that the first volume of a multi-volume Flora was soon to be published. This was exciting because it established the feasibility of tackling a multi-authored continental-scale floristic project. Whether or not Stan at the time considered a similar project for North America, he soon was deeply involved in one.
The European effort to produce a Flora Europaea challenged North American botanists; it was, if you will, a Botanical Sputnik. In August 1964, at the annual meeting of the American Institute of Biological Sciences (A.I.B.S.), the Council of the American Society of Plant Taxonomists (A.S.P.T.) appointed a committee to study the feasibility of undertaking a similar project. Two years later,
during another A.I.B.S. meeting in suburban Washington, D.C., the Council of the A.S.P.T. voted to sponsor the “Flora North America” project and an organizational structure was created in which the Smithsonian Institution served as the project headquarters. In 1967, A.I.B.S. assumed sponsorship of the project and received funding from the National Science Foundation (N.S.F.), including funds for automated databanking (i.e., databasing). Stan served as Program Secretary of the Flora North America Program from 1967 until 1971. In 1971, the Smithsonian Institution assumed administrative responsibility for the project with the understanding that it would also contribute financial support. Stan was made Program Director in 1972 and was spending almost all of his time on this effort. Unfortunately, the Program unraveled in 1973 when the Smithsonian re-evaluated its commitment and consequently the N.S.F. withdrew its financial support.
Although the Flora North America Program did not produce a Flora, as did its European counterpart, Stan deserves credit for innovative applications of computers in support of floristic research and publication. His ideas and their logical successors continue to serve the Flora of North America Project, which is the 1982 re-incarnation of the program led by Stan in the 1960s and 1970s. The current project began publishing the multi-volume Flora of North America in 1993 and is well on its way to completing a continental-scale flora.
The International Botanical Congress held in Edinburgh in 1964 had another long-lasting impact on Stan’s career. Taking advantage of his time in Europe, he briefly visited the Komarov Botanical Institute in Leningrad. When he first arrived in Michigan
Stanwyn Shetler on Plummers Island, Maryland ca. 1970. (Photo courtesy of the Washington Biologists’ Field Club)
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as a graduate student five years earlier, he enrolled in Russian-language courses and he began to build a library of Soviet taxo-nomic and ecologic literature. Although his dissertation had focused on Nearctic Campanula rotundifolia, he already planned to expand the yet unfinished work to the Palearctic and he hoped that A.A. Fedorov would be one of his collaborators on a joint world mono-graph of Campanula. Stan’s interest in Russian Botany and contacts also led to the publication of a book titled The Komarov Botanical Institute: 250 years of Russian research (1967).
The publication of the Komarov book pulled Stan into the slowly expanding world of American-Soviet detente, at least as it affected science. Altogether, he made seven trips to the Soviet Union or Russia. In the mid to late 1980s, Stan was involved in the U.S.-U.S.S.R Botanical Exchange Program, which included collecting trips to Soviet republics. Stan himself participated in the “Second Field Expedition to the U.S.S.R. under the USA/USSR Cooperative Agreement in the Protection of the Environment” organized by Thomas S. Elias. They visited Tuva, a remote Soviet autonomous republic in southern Siberia, with fellow American botanist David Murray who recalls Stan being a bit uneasy as they mounted horses for a trip to the alpine zone of the Altai Mountains. The three Americans survived the horseback trip and others, and returned with a valuable collection of plants. Their Tuva expedi-tion even made a cameo appearance in Ralph Leighton’s Tuva or bust! Richard Feynman’s last journey (2000). The physicist and Nobel laureate Feynman and his friend Leighton had a running joke that they would be the first Americans to visit what seemed to them the most obscure country in the world, “Tannu Tuva” had been nominally independent from 1921 to 1944, and were surprised to learn that three American Botanists had anticipated them by visiting in 1983.
The following year, Stan began to assume more responsi-bilities as an assistant to the Director of the N.M.N.H. His ear-lier experience with the Flora North America Program had given him valuable management experience. The world’s largest natural history museum had grown to such an extent that the director’s office required a dedicated scientific liaison with research staff. Initially, this was in an unofficial capacity, but eventually Stan was named Associate and ultimately Deputy Director of the Museum. As an administrator, he was highly regarded for his fairness and calm demeanor. Stan served under three different directors: James C. Tyler, Robert S. Hoffman, and Frank H. Talbot. When Talbot resigned in 1994, Stan returned to the Department of Botany.
Shortly after returning to the Department of Botany, Stan elected to retire. In 1995, he was appointed Curator Emeritus and began what may have been one of the more scientifically produc-tive periods of his career. He served as one of several general sci-entific editors for the English translations of the last eight volumes published of the 30-volume Flora of the USSR (1968–2004). The eight volumes and an alphabetical index for which Stan receives credit were published between 1997 and 2004. In addition to this editorial work, he pursued projects focused on the flora of the
mid-Atlantic region of the eastern United States. Years of record-ing the first f lowering dates for spring-blooming plants in the Washington, D.C. area led to the publication of a co-authored paper (Abu-Asab & al., Biol. Conservation 10: 597–612. 2001) that documented a shift to earlier flowering times, and was very important for demonstrating the value of phenology for document-ing climate change.
Throughout his life, Stan was involved in regional conserva-tion organizations and issues. He served on a number of boards and councils, especially in northern Virginia where he lived. He also regularly participated in the National Audubon Society Christmas Bird Count and from all accounts had an amazing knack for imitat-ing birdcalls. Stan was married to his wife Elaine for 54 years. She survives him, as do their son and daughter, two of Stan’s sisters, a brother, a stepmother, and two grandchildren.
NoteThe line quoted in the title of this memorial is from the poem
“Campanula”, which was published by Liberty Hyde Bailey in his book of verse Wind and Weather (1919). Stan reproduced the poem as a frontispiece in his dissertation (1979) and in its published ver-sion, Variation and evolution of the Nearctic harebells (Campanula subsect. Heterophylla) (1982).
AcknowledgmentsBotany and other Museum staff kindly shared their recol-
lections of Stan with me. The Smithsonian Institution Archives graciously granted access to administrative and biographical files relating to Stan’s career.
Laurence J. DorrNational Museum of Natural History, Department of Botany, MRC-166, Smithsonian Institution, P.O. Box 37012, Washington, D.C. 20013-7012, U.S.A.; [email protected]
Editors noteBeing from the same institution I knew Stan as a colleague and
administrator and he was always helpful and one of the nicest people I have worked with. Stan continued to work during retirement and one of his most important projects was the revision of Frederick J. Hermann’s much outdated A checklist of plants in the Washington-Baltimore area (1946). The publication of the Annotated checklist of the vascular plants of the Washington-Baltimore area included two parts, Part I, Ferns, Fern Allies, Gymnosperms, and Dicotyledons (186 pp.) and Part II, Monocotyledons (95 pp.). This publication encompassed all native and naturalized species of vascular plants known to occur in the geographic area, and is an important ref-erence for botanists and conservationists. As part of this work, Stan curated the D.C. Flora Herbarium, a subsection of the U.S. National Herbarium, which contains almost 70,000 plant specimens. Although never published it is available on line http://botany.si.edu/DCFlora/
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THE ROLF AND GERTRUD DAHLGREN PRIZE FOR 2017 AWARDED TO HANS WALTER LACK
On 2 December 2017, at the annual celebrations of the Royal Physiographic Society of Lund, Sweden, the Rolf and Gertrud Dahlgren Prize for 2017 was awarded to Hans Walter Lack, Botanischer Garten und Botanisches Museum Berlin. The prize, inaugurated in 1988, is given every third year to a scientist who has made major contributions to botany, particularly the systemat-ics and evolution of the angiosperms, and regardless of his or her nationality. The prize winner is chosen by a committee among active researchers working on botany in the broad-minded spirit of Rolf and Gertrud Dahlgren.
Hans Walter Lack is awarded the prize for his work on sys-tematic botany, chiefly dealing with the family Asteraceae, and his books on the history of botany and botanical illustration. Born in Vienna in 1949, he received a doctorate at the University of Vienna in 1975 on a dissertation on the genus Picris (Die Gattung Picris L., sensu lato, im Ostmediterranischen-Westasiatischen Raum. Dissertation Universität Wien 116). After employment in Salzburg and Munich, he came to Berlin as staff member at the Botanical Garden and Museum, from 1990 as Professor and Leader of the Library. From the mid 1990s, his main interest became the his-tory of botany, botanical collections and illustrations. Particularly remarkable are two large, richly illustrated books, The Flora Graeca story: Sibthorp, Bauer, and Hawkins in the Levant (1999) and The Bauers: Joseph, Franz & Ferdinand: Masters of botanical illustration (2015). These two books are genuine master-pieces, highly readable, based on thor-ough research, and with an abundance of beautiful and informative illustrations. Taken as a whole, Lack’s work represents a rare combination of research in two areas of systematics and evolution of the flowering plants: systematics in the strict scientific meaning of the word and botan-ical history and botanical illustration, and it shows that progress in botany benefits from dialogue between modern ideas on one hand and ideas and results achieved during the long history of botany, right back to Linnaeus, on the other. The award of the Rolf and Gertrud Dahlgren Prize to Hans Walter Lack intends to emphasize the importance of this link.
The prize is awarded by the Royal Physiographic Society at Lund, founded on 2 December 1772, by, among others, the botanist Anders Jahan Retzius. Carl Peter Thunberg was elected member in 1773 and Linnaeus the elder in 1775. The Society is the trustee of a long range of donations, several providing funds for prizes to reward outstanding research in botany. Professor Rolf Dahlgren is best known for his system of angiosperm classification based on evalu-ation of many more characters than previously used, including
new anatomical and chemical characters. Particularly his clas-sification of the monocotyledons has had lasting effect on the sys-
tematics of the angiosperms. Educated at the University of Lund, Rolf Dahlgren became professor of systematic botany at the Botanical Museum and Library at the University of Copenhagen, where he worked from 1973 to his death in a tragic traffic accident on 14 February 1987. Because of this association with botanists at Lund and Copenhagen, the prize-winners have frequently visited both universities to give lectures, in this case Hans Walter Lack lectured on Lilac and horse-chestnut – Discovery and rediscovery. Both species are now widely cultivated, but were originally seen in the 16th century in Istanbul by European envoys to the capital of the Ottoman Empire; only much later were they rediscovered in the wild in moun-tainous areas of the Balkans.
At the same annual celebration in Lund on 2 December 2017, Arne Strid, formerly Professor at the University of Copenhagen, later Director of the Botanical Garden of Gothenburg and now Professor emeritus at the University
of Lund, received Rosén’s Linnaeus Medal in Gold, which had been awarded in 2016 for Strid’s impressive Atlas of the
Aegean flora. Vol. 1: Text & Plates. Vol. 2: Maps (2016). This medal is awarded to a Swede for distinguished contributions to Botany.
Ib FriisProfessor emeritus, Natural History Museum of Denmark, Copenhagen, Denmark; [email protected]
Wild Lilac (Syringa vulgaris L.) in Carpinus orientalis forest on limestone. Photographed by Arne Strid in
2000 near Komnina in northernmost Greece.
Eva and Hans Walter Lack at the prize-giving ceremony in Lund, December 2017. (Photo by Barbro Strid)
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FRIIS, IB AND HENRIK BALSLEV (EDS.) 2017. TROPICAL PLANT COLLECTIONS: LEGACIES FROM THE PAST? ESSENTIAL TOOLS FOR THE FUTURE? Proceedings of an international symposium held by the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters in Copenhagen, 19th–21st of May 2015. Scientia Danica, Series B, Biologica, Volume 6, 319 pp. ISBN: 978-87-7304-407-0; ISSN: 1904-5484
A much shorter title to this well written and organized publication consisting of 21 papers on tropical plant collections could be, “Why herbaria matter: Past, present and future”. This volume is rich with details on the history of botanical collections in the tropics, research collaboration between North-South countries, non-traditional ways herbarium specimens are being used in the 21st century and will continue to be used in the future. Also, while the emphasis is on the state of affairs for tropical plant collections, many of the reasons used to argue in support of herbaria, apply to tem-perate plant collections as well.
As stated in the Introduction, by edi-tors Ib Friis and Henrik Balslev, in 2015, botanists from 18 countries met at the Royal Danish Academy of Sciences and Letters to discuss their concerns with a dis-turbing trend of the last decade of several herbaria suffering from a decrease in funding and staff despite their scientific importance to humanity. It’s an alarming problem affecting both European and American institutions with tropical plant collections as well as staff at tropical herbaria and botanical gardens. On a more positive note, another important topic of sev-eral papers is North-South synergy, and how this has progressed from a colonial relationship to true collaboration between nations and scientists in collecting, studying, and education. Also the digitization of herbarium specimens and data has improved the working relationship between researchers in developing areas but of course more needs to be done.
As someone immersed in the botanical world as a botanical librarian, I kept reading these papers thinking, “Why are we tak-ing a fundamental type of science, such as herbaria, for granted in our modern age?”
This publication made me think about how I have taken plant collections for granted. In the mid-1980s, I worked for National Cancer Institute when Paclitaxel (taxol) was being developed as a chemotherapy agent. At the time there was no chemical process to produce taxol and the compound used in drug development was extracted from the bark of the Pacific Yew (Taxus brevifolia). As I watched taxol move successfully along through drug development, I didn’t think about it being collected, described, published, in The North American Sylva (1849) and herbarium specimen deposited in a herbarium by botanist Thomas Nutall over 130 years ago.
The last sections of this publication try to remedy this situation by linking the importance of collection-based science to the more well-known scientific issues of our time. Science topics such as biodi-versity, climate change, genomics, drug discovery and studies using “big data”. All the authors make arguments why her-barium specimens are important to their research. The last paper in the Proceedings is on botanical gardens in tropical areas and their importance to sustainable devel-opment and biodiversity of tropical regions in the future.
I highly recommend this publication to anyone wanting to learn more about the history of plant collections and wanted or needing to make the argument why tropical plant collections are important and should be adequately funded and maintained into the future.
Editors noteTo order this volume, send an e-mail to kdvs@royalacademy.
dk with the book title, preferred number of copies and a shipping address. You will be sent the book(s) and a printed invoice to be paid by bank transfer. In addition to the price of the book(s), a small amount will be charged for postage. The cost is 300 DKK (approxi-mately 50 USD). To read more about the book, go to
is open to all IAPT Members. Please feel free to submit any short article you think is appropriate. We frequently publish such things as obituaries of interesting systematists, reviews of recent meetings that have a significant systematics component, awards, honors, and even opinion pieces if they pertain to plant systematics. As the editor of this column I encourage you to send me your interesting contributions. All submissions are peer-reviewed by at least two colleagues. — Vicki Funk ([email protected])
