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. 33 June 14, 1992 Address: aceska@cue.bc.ca Victoria, B.C. ------------------------------------------------- COMING EVENTS IN VICTORIA, B.C. June 16, 1992 - Newcombe Auditorium, 8:00 p.m. Ron McBeath (Edinburgh Botanic Gardens): "Plant hunting in China" - cost $5.00 Tickets in Dig This, Ivy's Bookstore & Village Books. BOTANY BC 1992 The meeting took place in Lac le Jeune May 28 to May 30 and was very successful. The topic of the meeting was Grassland ecology and the standard of all talks was high. We saw some exceptional slides in contributions by Don Gayton and Anna Roberts and in the evening "Slide Talk Photo Essay" by Diana & Alex Inselberg. Thanks to Bob Scheer and Wayne Erickson we had an opportunity to meet Ecological Reserves Volunteer Wardens. BOTANY BC 1993 The following topics were chosen for the next year meeting of the BOTANY BC: Insects and plants, and Ethnobotany. Organizational committee was asked to plan the meeting somewhere in the Kootenay's (SE British Columbia). POSITION OPEN Contract Position: WETLAND ECOLOGIST Term: Approximately 9 months Duties: Work with the B.C. Conservation Data Centre, Ministry of Environment, Lands and Parks, and the Ministry of Forests on development of wetland vegetation types (freshwater and estuarine) in B.C. Conduct literature search of all wetland classifications in the province to identify described wetland communities. Assemble plot data from MoF, MoELP, and other sources into format compatible with the biogeoclimatic correlation synthesis programs. Determine areas of the province which have not yet been studied. Code historical and new data, when necessary. Correlate MoELP Habitat Classes with MoF site association/site series classification. Arrange workshops with regional experts to review the classification. Prepare progress report and identify further classification needs at end of term. If interested, please submit a resume with covering letter addressing qualifications and contract fees to the following address, no later than Friday, June 19, 1992: Carmen Cadrin B.C. Conservation Data Centre 780 Blanshard St. Victoria, B.C. V8V 1X5 (phone 604/356-0929) MITELLA CAULESCENS IN BRITISH COLUMBIA From: Terry Taylor c/o Beth Whittaker showed me the M. caulescens population in the Chilliwack Valley. It is beside a small creek along the edge of the lower part of the Elk Mountain trail. I did not know that this species still occurred in B. C. It is definitely M. caulescens, as Beth believed: flowers at top of raceme, buds at bottom. Leaves on stems. Beth Whittaker's plant list has just been published in the latest issue of Discovery. The Mitella caulescens site may be slated for logging. RE: MITELLA CAULESCENS From: Adolf Ceska Check the UBC herbarium, they may have several more collections from the Chilliwack River Valley. About seven years ago there was a student in the UBC who studied Mitella caulescens distribution. On Vancouver Island we have an old record of M. caulescens from Port Alberni. We (Oluna & I) collected it with Bob Ogilvie & Hans Roemer on Limestone Mountain and recently at the lower part of the Nixon Creek (by the access road to the Walbran Valley). TIARELLA TRIFOLIATA VS. T. LACINIATA From: Terry Taylor c/o The new Vascular Plants of B. C. suggests that Tiarella laciniata is a hybrid of T. unifoliata and T. trifoliata. I am sceptical of this conclusion. I have not observed T. laciniata in sites geographically or altitudinally between the other two, but rather it grows towards the seaward direction of T. trifoliata, at least in the Lower Mainland area. All three occur along the Howe Sound Crest Trail, and T. laciniata reaches the 1000 meter level on Eagle Ridge, above Buntzen Lake. It does not seem to be be any farther east. On casual observation T. laciniata does not seem intermediate with its deeply divided leaflets. In fact T. trifoliata looks more like a cross between T. laciniata and T. unifoliata. RE: TIARELLA From: Adolf Ceska Tiarella laciniata cannot be a hybrid of T. trifoliata x unifoliata (see hybrid index calculations by Kern - cf. Madrono 16 [1966]: 152-160). The occurrence of T. laciniata on the B.C. Lower Mainland is interesting and I would be interested in any herbarium specimens you can send me. The Lower Mainland plants were mentioned by D.B.O. Savile (Canadian Field-Naturalist 87 [1973]: 460-462), who also pointed out differences in the pubescence of petioles: "Tiarella laciniata petioles have abundant gland-tipped white hairs, of which the longest are conspicuously flexuous and often somewhat decurved. ... In T. unifoliata and in typical T. trifoliata there is a modest production of short to moderately long (but straight) hairs near lamina; but for most of the petiole length there are only short-stalked to sessile glands, and often these are so sparse that the petiole may appear glabrous to the naked eye." The rank of our western Tiarella taxa is still open to questions. Here I refer to them at the species level only because I want to keep the names short. In Vascular Plants of B.C. they are listed as varieties of T. trifoliata. Kern (see above) recognized a single species (T. trifoliata) with two subspecies (unifoliata and trifoliata) and treated T. laciniata as T. trifoliata subsp. trifoliata var. laciniata. DELTA PROGRAMS From: Taxacom discussion list New versions of the DELTA programs for MS-DOS are now available on the Taxacom FTP server. The files are in the directory /pub/delta/msdos of the anonymous FTP area at huh.harvard.edu (128.103.108.123). The distribution package consists of 3 text files *.1st, 6 self-expanding files *.exe, and 4 image files *.gif. Download.1st contains this information about downloading the files, changes.1st contains the revision history of the programs, and delta.1st describes the procedure for installing the programs on an MS-DOS computer. The files must be transmitted in binary mode, set by the ftp command `binary'. (Failure to do so will result in the error message `HeaderC Error' when the .exe files are run.) To install the programs on an MS-DOS computer, place the ---.exe files in the directory C:\DELTA, and the .gif files in the directory C:\DELTA\LEP. Then follow the installation procedure described in delta.1st, but omitting the two XCOPY commands. The date of this release is 21 April 1992. BIOLOGICAL NITROGEN FIXATION ELECTRONIC NETWORK BNFNET is the Biological Nitrogen Fixation Electronic Network and currently has about 90 members (April. 1992) from 25 countries, who can be reached via its mailing list BNFNET-L BNFNET-L provides a forum for the exchange of information, experiences and scientific results on BNF. It has 6 discussion groups for e.g. Legume-Rhizobium, Nitrogen Fixing Trees; Genetics/Biochemistry; Free-living nitrogen Fixers; Culture Collections; and Computer Networking. BNFNET-L also serves as an electronic newsletter and provides information on forthcoming conferences, recent publications and research profiles of organizations, etc. To join BNFNET-L, send the listserv command: SUBSCRIBE BNFNET-L to LISTSERV@FINHUTC (Bitnet) or LISTSERV@FINHUTC.HUT.FI (Internet)