From aceska@cue.bc.ca Mon Feb 14 23:06:48 1994 Date: Mon, 14 Feb 1994 14:47:27 -0800 From: Adolf Ceska To: ben@cue.bc.ca Subject: BEN # 70 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. 70 February 14, 1994 Address: aceska@cue.bc.ca Victoria, B.C. ----------------------------------------------------------- Dr. A. Ceska, P.O.Box 8546, Victoria, B.C. Canada V8W 3S2 ----------------------------------------------------------- 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 "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.