From aceska@cue.bc.caSat Feb 18 22:01:07 1995 Date: Fri, 17 Feb 1995 20:42:52 -0800 From: Adolf Ceska To: ben@cue.bc.ca Subject: BEN # 92 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. 92 February 17, 1995 aceska@freenet.victoria.bc.ca Victoria, B.C. ----------------------------------------------------------- Dr. A. Ceska, P.O.Box 8546, Victoria, B.C. Canada V8W 3S2 ----------------------------------------------------------- SPOROPHYTES OF TAKAKIA FOUND IN CHINA From: Bryological Times 81 A Cryptogamic expedition in China with the north-western part of the Yunnan Province as its main object was made from September to October in 1994. This is the fourth expedition organized by the National Science Museum, Tokyo, and the Kunming Institute of Botany, Academia Sinica, during 1993 and 1994. As bryologists we participated in the field trip. The investigated area includes Dali, Lijiang, Zhongdian, Degen, Weixi and their neighbourhoods. Especially, it was the first time for botanists to visit the southern part of Mt. Meilixueshan, situated at the boundary between Tibet and Yunnan. The first author found both antheridial plants and sporophytes of Takakia ceratophylla in Mt. Meilixueshan. This is the second locality for sporophytes of Takakia, besides Atka Island in the central Aleutian district. This suggests that Takakia has a higher frequency of sexual reproduction than was considered before. Authors of the original note in Bryological Times 81: Masanobu Higuchi, National Science Museum, Tokyo, Japan Dacheng Zhang, Academia Sinica, Kunming, Yunnan, China. WHAT IS TAKAKIA ? From: Dr. Wilf B. Schofield [Genus Takakia was described in 1958 and contains two species. Its taxonomic position is unclear; most often, it was placed in the liverworts. Originally, only female gametophytes were known, until 1990 when sporophytes were found on Takakia ceratophylla from the Aleutian Islands; sporophytes are still unknown in Takakia lepidozioides. Here is Dr. Schofield's answer to my question "What is Takakia." - AC] Takakia is clearly a bryophyte and is not a liverwort, at least in the accepted sense. If it must be forced into a familiar category, it would be placed with the mosses, but, like Sphagnum (of the Sphagnopsida, not the Bryopsida), has no close relatives in the mosses. The Class Takakiopsida is available, originally proposed by M. Mizutani, and seems a more reasonable categoriza- tion. Sporophyte characters are moss-like: seta elongating before sporangium differentiation, conducting strand in seta, photosynthetic seta and sporangium, columella present, etc. Gametophytic features are unusual, and many are also moss-like: sex organs, for example, but the leaf units, the absence of perichaetia and perigonial leaves, the absence of rhizoids, etc., are very telling and there are some other characters as well. In North America T. lepidozioides is widely scattered in coastal British Columbia and adjacent Alaska, while T. ceratophylla appears in the Aleutian Islands, where sporophytes and an- theridia have been found on Adak and Atka Islands, at least, and are likely to be found elsewhere. T lepidozioides has neither sporophytes nor antheridia reported, and appears not to be very closely related to T ceratophylla. Both species are found in the Himalayas, and T lepidozioides is in Japan and Borneo. Research will soon be published concerning T ceratophylla, at least, especially the beautiful studies of K. Renzaglia in collaboration with D. Smith, K. Macfarlard and P Davison. Fur- ther researches are in progress by B. Crandall-Stotler, B. Murray, R.M. Schuster and W.B. Schofield. In future, it is hoped that molecular information will become available from the re- searches of B. Mishler. Cytological information has been reported by K. Inoue and Tatuno [very low number n=4, lowest among bryophytes] while phytochemistry has been treated by Markham and Porter. TRUFFLE DETECTOR REJECTED BY FRENCH TRUFFLE HUNTERS From: Chris Wilson "Oui, but can you eat it?" (The European MagAZine, 3-9 February 1995, p. 16 - abbrev.) With truffles at $560 a kilo, you might have thought that a machine to find them more reliably than dogs or pigs would interest truffle hunters. But surprisingly, the new technology had a frosty response in southwest France this week. The portable truffle-finder, which goes on sale this year at $950, uses the latest aroma-detection technology to recognize the unique scent of the precious underground fungus. The machine brings scientific rigour to the hunt. It looks like a metal detector and its network of sensors are held close to the ground. When the truffle odour is recognized, the machine beeps. French farmers, however, are resistant to new ideas: "Finding the truffle is an act of respect and it should be done with a dog or a pig not a machine. Done like that, it lacks poetry." Expert trufflres have always used pigs and trained dogs but it is estimated that the animals may miss 20 per cent of truffles. "Look at it this way" said another truffler. "I have a farm. I keep pigs. Each year I buy a pig for $90. It searches for truffles naturally and it finds me 40-50 kilos a season. After a year I eat it, and you can't do that with a machine, can you?"