From aceska@cue.bc.caMon Mar 27 21:37:39 1995 Date: Mon, 27 Mar 1995 06:32:56 -0800 From: Adolf Ceska To: ben@cue.bc.ca Subject: BEN # 96 BBBBB EEEEEE NN N ISSN 1188-603X BB B EE NNN N BBBBB EEEEE NN N N BOTANICAL BB B EE NN NN ELECTRONIC BBBBB EEEEEE NN N NEWS No. 96 March 27, 1995 aceska@freenet.victoria.bc.ca Victoria, B.C. ----------------------------------------------------------- Dr. A. Ceska, P.O.Box 8546, Victoria, B.C. Canada V8W 3S2 ----------------------------------------------------------- GARRY OAK (QUERCUS GARRYANA) AND WINTER BIRDS From: "Gross, Eric {co-op}" I am working on my honours thesis, winter bird communities in urban Garry Oak (Quercus garryana) fragments and have had some difficulty finding literature incorporating Garry Oak and other West Coast habitats (e.g., Douglas Fir) and winter birds (presence/absence and abundance/density). If anyone knows of any research that has been published dealing with this subject area or summer birds and oak/other West Coast habitats I would ap- preciate if you could direct me to them. Eric Gross 1811 Teakwood Rd. Victoria B.C. Canada V8N 1E4 WHAT'S NEW IN VASCULAR PLANTS OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST Botrychium lineare W.H. Wagner - New species of a Moonwort, known from Oregon (type locality), Idaho, Montana, California, Colorado, Quebec, and New Brunswick. Related to B. campestre from which it differs by having linear segments of the trophophore, branched in larger forms. Habitat: grassy areas in the subalpine zone. (Wagner, W.H., Jr. & F.S. Wagner. 1995. Another widely disjunct, rare and local North American Moonwort. Amer. Fern J. 84(1): 5-10.) Franklin's Sedge, Carex franklinii, cannot be distinguished from Carex petricosa and Carex petricosa var. petricosa should in- clude C. franklinii as a synonym. C. petricosa var. petricosa occurs in the western part, C. petricosa var. misandroides in the eastern part of North America. (Ball, P.W. & M. Zoladz. 1994. The taxonomy of Carex petricosa [Cyperaceae] and related species in North America. Rhodora 96: 295-310.) Cabomba caroliniana (Cabombaceae), Murdannia keisak (Commelinaceae), and Lastenia minor (Asteraceae) reported new for Washington, Acorus calamus (Araceae), Cabomba caroliniana, and Mimulus ringens (Scrophulariaceae) reported new for Oregon. (Madrono 41(4): 330-333. 1994) THE GEOLOGY OF SOUTHERN VANCOUVER ISLAND: A FIELD GUIDE by C.J. Yorath & H.W. Nasmith (1995) was published for the Geological Association of Canada, Pacific Section by Orca Book Publishers, P.O. Box 5626, Station "B", Victoria, B.C., Canada V8R 6S4. 172 p. ISBN 1 55143-032-0 [paperback] CDN$14.95 LIST OF INTERACTIVE IDENTIFICATION PROGRAMS From: Mike Dallwitz , originally posted on TAXACOM I don't have a comprehensive list, but here are a few. Many of them are commercial (i.e. not shareware or freeware). Some are available only with data sets, that is, you can't buy the program and construct your own package - you must produce the package in collaboration with the software supplier. ASKATAXA Fred Rhoades, Biology Department, Western Washington University, Bellingham, WA 98225, USA. Email: fredr@henson.cc.wwu.edu CABIKEY Ian White, CAB International, Wallingford, Oxon OX10 8DE, UK. Phone: +44 491 83 2111, Fax: +44 491 83 3508 FLORA Eirene Williams, Seale-Hayne Dept of Land Use, University of Plymouth, Newton Abbot, Devon TQ12 6NQ, UK. Fax: +44 626 32 5605 INTKEY Shareware, available (with several data sets) by gopher or anonymous ftp from the following Internet hosts. muse.bio.cornell.edu (directory: /pub/delta) spider.ento.csiro.au (directory: /delta) Mike Dallwitz, CSIRO Division of Entomology, GPO Box 1700, Canberra ACT 2601, Australia. Fax: +61 6 246 4000, Email: md@ento.csiro.au LINNAEUS II ETI, University of Amsterdam, Mauritskade 61, NL 1092 AD Amster- dam, The Netherlands. Fax: +31 20 525 7238, Email: els@eti.bio.eva.nl MEKA Christopher Meacham, MEACHAM@VIOLET.BERKELEY.EDU, Museum Infor- matics Project, 501 Banway Building, Univ. of California, Berkeley, CA 94720 USA ONLINE Richard J. Pankhurst, Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh EH3 5LR, UK. Fax: +44 31 552 0382, Email: rjp@castle.ed.ac.uk PLATO Christine Leon, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Richmond, Surrey TW9 3AB, England POLLY Trevor Whiffin, Department of Botany, La Trobe University, Bundoora, Vic 3083, Australia TAXASOFT (Iteractive identification directly from DELTA format and Binary format ) Eric Gouda, Jungfrau 107, NL-3524 WJ Utrecht, The Netherlands. Email: gouda@cc.ruu.nl [Added by E. Gouda] XID XID Services, Inc., Post Office Box 272, Pullman, WA 99163, USA - Phone/Fax: (509)332-2989 [Added by AC] XPER Jacques Lebbe, Service de Me'decine Nucle'aire, Hoital Brous- sais, 93 rue Didot, 75014 Paris, France INTERACTIVE IDENTIFICATION SOFTWARE II From: Jim Croft , originally also on TAXACOM Not really an application for a home PC (although I suppose you could cram it in), but you might be interested in the smarts developed by Andrew Taylor (andrewt@cse.unsw.edu.au, http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au//) at the University of NSW. Andrew, a computer science engineer rather than a botanist, took some English language botanical descriptions (Eucalyptus and Angophora from the Flora of Australia), minced them through some clever natural language processing algorithms, and reversed engineered a more or less recognizable DELTA dataset. He made the dataset queryable on the WWW with clients/browsers with forms cabability (Mosaic, Netscape, etc.) both as a set of independent menus and a set of check boxes. Using some nifty lateral thinking, he figured one could use the same algorithm to parse an arbitrary description of a plant, and then match the result of this description against the already parsed dataset. The result is a dialog box in which you write a natural language description of the plant and let the server find the best matches for you. You can find this application on: http://www.cse.unsw.edu.au//interfaces.html This is research in progress at a computer engineering school, and the server is often under a lot of strain and not available, but it is worth having a look at the outline and the interfaces. COMMUNICATE EFFECTIVELY VIA ELECTRONIC MAIL Angell, D. & B. Heslop. 1994. The Elements of E-mail Style: Communicate Effectively via Electronic Mail. Addison- Wesley Publishing Co., New York. 157 p. US$ 12.95 ISBN 0- 201-62709-4 [paperback] ...."is the first practical guide to written electronic com- munication. It simplifies and summarizes essential writing techniques so you can upgrade your writing skills and see your e-mail make maximum impact in minimal time." ROCK AND ALPINE PLANTS DISCUSSION LIST: ALPINE-L ALPINE-L is an Electronic Mailing List on Rock Gardening, Dwarf and Alpine Plants, and Their Botany To subscribe, send to listserv@nic.surfnet.NL the following message: subscribe alpine-l Firstname Lastname City Hardiness-zone For example: subscribe alpine-L Reginald Farrar WashingtonDC Zone7a First published, daily, electronically, by Harry Dewey, Feb. 6- 17, 1995, as: RGJ, the Rock Gardening Journal Listowner (Netherlands): Eric Gouda, curator, Botanic Gardens, University of Utrecht. Jungfrau 107 OR Botanic Gardens NL-3524WJ Utrecht University of Utrecht The Netherlands P. O. Box 80.162 NL-3508TD Utrecht The Netherlands Listowner (United States): Harry Dewey, editor, Patowmack Papers, newsletter of the Potomac Valley Chapter of the North American Rock Garden Society. 4605 Brandon Lane, Beltsville MD 20705-2624 USA HarryD@capaccess.org Alpine-L@nic.surfnet.NL Tel.: 301 937-1446 Fax: 301 595-5468 (by appointment) PANAX - GINSENG DISCUSSION LIST From: Sally Abbott The B.C. Ministry of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, and University College of the Cariboo in Kamloops, B.C., invite your participation in PANAX -- a discussion group for people involved in the production, processing and use of Panax spp. and Siberian ginseng. We look forward to an exchange of information on primary and value-added production as well as research and extension. To sign on to PANAX, address an email message to: mailserv@cariboo.bc.ca In the body of the message, type the one-line command: subscribe panax Firstname Lastname To communicate with the group, address your messages to: panax@cariboo.bc.ca For further information, contact: Al Oliver, BSA, P.Ag. aoliver@galaxy.gov.bc.ca Ron Smith, Ph.D. ronsmith@carins.cariboo.bc.ca