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No. 70 February 14, 1994
Address: aceska at cue.bc.ca Victoria, B.C.
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Dr. A. Ceska, P.O.Box 8546, Victoria, B.C. Canada V8W 3S2
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DR. ROLF SINGER DIED
From: TAXACOM
Dr. Singer, a member of the Field Museum staff for many years,
died in Chicago late Tuesday evening, 18 January 1994, of heart
failure at age 87. Dr. Singer had a long and productive career
in mycology and published over 300 papers and several books,
among them "Agaricales in Modern Taxonomy" (now in the 4th
edition).
NEW MYCOLOGICAL SOCIETY FORMED
The first meeting of Victoria's new mycological society held on
February 3, 1994 brought a crowd of 56 people. Paul Kroeger
showed slides that document activities of the Vancouver
Mycological Society. Ms. Hannah Nadel was elected the President.
Her address is: 7028 Bryrwood Court, R.R. # 2, Brentwood Bay,
B.C., V0S 1A0; phone 604-544-1386. Annual membership fee is
$15.00 for adults (one membership applies for the whole family
or household), and $10 for students and seniors.
Next meeting will be on Thursday, March 3, 1994 and the speaker
will be Dr. Scott Redhead.
"STERILE" PURPLE LOOSESTRIFE CULTIVARS ARE NOT STERILE
From: Journal Amer. Soc. Hort. Sci. 118: 851-858. 1993
Neil O. Anderson and Peter D. Ascher demonstrated that the
cultivars of purple loosestrife are highly fertile, producing
viable seeds and fertile progeny when crossed with wild purple
loosestrife populations, North American native Lythrum alatum,
or other cultivars. Thus, Lythrum cultivars grown in gardens
could serve as pollen or seed sources, thereby promoting the
continued spread of purple loosestrife. While this has unfor-
tunate implications for the sale of loosestrife cultivars, it is
necessary that the nursery industry and gardeners alike become
environmentally responsible and disavow cultivation of such
cultivars.
Anderson & Ascher propose that the assumptions of sterility have
been based largely on misinformation or a lack of knowledge
regarding the reproductive system operating in Lythrum.
[Lythrum salicaria is tristylous, i.e., plants differ in length
of their styles and anthers. Flowers on each plants have either
a short, medium, or long style and they have anthers of the two
complimentary lengths. E.g., flowers with short styles have only
medium and long anthers; flowers with medium styles have only
short and long anthers, etc. Flowers of a certain style length
can be pollinated only by the pollen that originated from an-
thers of the same length, i.e., the pollen has to come from a
plant belonging to a different style morph. If you grow plants
of only one style length, they may appear sterile.]
EXPLORE THE WORLD OF BOTANICAL GOPHERS !
Don't believe the English proverb that you don't get something
for nothing, gophers will prove you wrong. There is a wealth of
the most useful information on the computer network and it is
relatively easy to get what you want.
If you want to search the Gray Herbarium Index, you find it at
the Harvard University gopher. My gopher exploration usually
starts there. Type
gopher huh.harvard.edu
and you will get the Gray Herbarium Index, herbarium catalogues
of type specimens (in HUH - Harvard University Herbaria and in
other locations). Through this gopher I can get connected to
other gophers, and the Australian National Botanical Garden
gopher is the most complete botanical gopher I know.
For bryological information (lists of mosses and liverworts for
certain parts of the world, bryological news, taxonomical and
ecological software, etc.) go to
gopher unidui.uni-duisburg.de
For general information, religious books, world gazetteers, type
gopher sunsite.unc.edu
You can find Una Smith's Internet Guide for biologists here.
If you are interested in environmental information, go to En-
viroGopher; type
telnet envirolink.org
(login: gopher when you are connected).
Gophers are easy to use. VERONICA is an extension to gophers,
and you can use it to search for whatever topics through the
whole gopherspace. You can get the VERONICA search from any
gopher you enter.
You don't have to know, how the gopher works, but if you are
interested, read either of the following books:
Krol, Ed. 1992. The whole Internet: User's guide and catalogue.
O'Reilley & Associates, Sebastopol, California.
Fisher, Sharon. 1993. Riding the Internet highway. New Riders
Publishing, Carmel, Indiana.
If you get lost in the gopherspace, my internet guru Gary Shear-
man told me that you can get the internet address of a gopher
you are in by typing "=" (without apostrophes). I tried it and
it works. By using this internet address, you can get back to
the same gopher without going and searching through the maze of
other gophers.
There is a Czech proverb that says: "It is foolish to give
something for nothing, but it is even more foolish not to take
it." Remember, you would be foolish not to use gophers!
RARE PLANTS OF BRITISH COLUMBIA ON A VICTORIA GOPHER
From: Adolf Ceska <aceska at cue.bc.ca>
"The rare vascular plants of British Columbia" (Straley, G. B.
et al. 1985. - Syllogeus 59: 1-165) is available on gopher
freenet.victoria.bc.ca . The data are WAIS searchable, i.e., you
can search for the plant name (no common names, though), or for
any words mentioned in the text (e.g., Victoria, Nanaimo, etc.).
The file will be expanded soon to contain Conservation Data
Centre rarity ratings. Synonyms will be included to facilitate
the search of problematic names or disputable orthographic
variants. Thanks to Bob Scheer, B.C. Ministry of Environment,
Kamloops Region, for getting the information from Straley et al.
onto the computer.
NEW PUBLICATION
McJannet, Cheryl, G. Argus, Sylvia Edlund & J. Cayouette. 1993.
Rare vascular plants in the Canadian Arctic. Syllogeus No. 72:
1-79. ISBN 0-660-13071-8 [paperback] Cost: about CDN $ 15.00
This publication can be ordered from the Canadian Museum of
Nature, P.O.Box 3443, Station "D", Ottawa, Ont. Canada K1P 6P4,
phone 800-263-4433.
About 235 vascular plants listed as rare in the Canadian Arctic
have been included in this publication. The map of distribution
in the Canadian Arctic and few phytogeographical data are given
for each species.
