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. 32 May 24, 1992 Address: aceska@cue.bc.ca ------------------------------------------------- COMING EVENTS IN VICTORIA, B.C. June 3, 1992 - Swan Lake Nature Centre, 7:30 p.m. Richard Hebda: "Model green city - Victoria" June 16, 1992 - Newcombe Auditorium, 8:00 p.m. Ron McBeath (Edinburgh Botanic Gardens): "Plant hunting in China" - cost $5.00 ALASKA SPHAGNUM WORKSHOP From: Stephen S. Talbot (c/o Sandra Talbot A three day workshop on Sphagnum identification will be conducted by Dr. Richard Andrus, SUNY, Binghamton, NY, in Anchorage Alaska on July 22-24, 1992. Cost is $140.00. Make checks payable to the Alaska Native Plant Society, P.O. Box 141613, Anchorage, AK 99514. Enrollment is limited to 12 individuals. Contact: Stephen Talbot, USFWS, at 907-786-3381 or Sandra Looman Talbot, ftslt@alaska.bitnet for additional information. HYPHOLOMA TUBEROSUM IN AUSTRALIA From: The Mycologist 6(#1): 11,12. 1992. An interesting mushroom - Hypholoma tuberosum - was first described from mulch beds and compost files in Vancouver by Scott Redhead and Paul Kroeger (Mycotaxon 29[1988]: 457-465). About at the same time, sclerotia of this fungus was found in the peat and soil mixture in a nursery in Sydney, Australia. Abundant fruiting Hypholoma tuberosum in the sandy margins of the Georges Creek in Sydney were observed in April 1990. There are numerous commercial propagating nurseries in the vicinity of Georges Creek. Some interesting questions arise from the discovery of this agaric. What are its natural habitats? What role the sclerotia play in its biology? What is the connection between Vancouver, Canada and Sydney, Australia? IBERIS UMBELLATA ON NANOOSE HILL, VANCOUVER ISLAND From: A. Ceska On May 16, 1992 the Botany Group of the Victoria Natural History Society made a field trip to Nanoose Hill. Gary Shearman came across a small annual crucifer that turned to be Candytuft, Iberis umbellata. This a garden plant originating from the Mediterranean region. YEWSFUL STUFF From: The Economist May 9th-15th, 1992 The Economist brought a nice review of the recent advances in taxol research. This anticancer drug is obtained from the bark of Pacific Yew (Taxus brevifolia) which is a relatively rare tree. Promising trials have created a great need to increase the supply of taxol. There are three different ways to do this: make it, grow it or find a new wild source. Making taxol is stretching chemists to their limits. Pierre Potier, of the Chemical Institute of Natural Substances in Gif-sur-Yvette, France starts with baccatin III (found in leaves of European yew trees) and produced taxotere, similar to taxol, more soluble in water and possibly even more effective than taxol. Growing taxol in tissue or cell cultures has been achieved by ESCAgenetics, of San Carlos, California, and Phyton Catalytic of Ithaca, New York. Both companies are extremely cagey about the conditions they use, but they believe that they can start turning taxol by the kilogramme sometime next year. Harvesting taxol from a better natural source might be the best solution. Himalayan yew trees (Taxus wallichiana) accumulate taxol in their needles. Needles are harvestable and renewable, Himalayan yew trees are abundant and the people who would collect the needles would not demand North American wages for doing so. LOOKING FOR AN INFORMATION SOFTWARE From: Adolf Ceska I am looking for the replacement of REFERENCE FILE, the MS-DOS program I have been using for handling my bibliographies, address books, gazetteers, notes, collection lists etc. This program has the following features: 1) Variable field length. 2) User definable fields that can be indexed for fast retrieval. 3) The program is memory-resident (TSR), i.e., the data can be accessed from any application, including the communication software. The REFERENCE FILE (once distributed by the Reference Software Ltd. - producers of the popular style checker GRAMMATIK) does not work with 286, 386 or 486 IBM PC systems. WHAT IS BEN ? From: Shorter Oxford English Dictionary BEN, obs. pres.ind., subj. pl. and inf. of Be, v.