From aceska at telus.net Thu Jul 3 14:39:34 2008 From: aceska at telus.net (Adolf Ceska) Date: Thu, 3 Jul 2008 06:39:34 -0700 Subject: [BEN-L]BEN # 397 Message-ID: <005801c8dd12$3b1c9d60$b155d820$@net> 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. 397 July 3, 2008 aceska@telus.net Victoria, B.C. ----------------------------------------------------------- Dr. A. Ceska, P.O.Box 8546, Victoria, B.C. Canada V8W 3S2 ----------------------------------------------------------- CBHL ANNUAL LITERATURE AWARD TO CHARLIE JARVIS AND SUE OLSEN From: Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries (CBHL), Press Release, June 5, 2008 Created in 2000, the CBHL Annual Literature Award is given by the Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries (CBHL) to both the author and publisher of a work that makes a significant contribution to the literature of botany or horticulture. _Order out of Chaos: Linnean Plant Names and Their Types_ by Charlie Jarvis (Linnean Society of London in association with the Natural History Museum, London, 2007), and _Encyclopedia of Garden Ferns_ by Sue Olson (Timber Press, 2007), have won the 2008 Annual Literature Awards from The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries. Technical category: Charlie Jarvis's _Order out of Chaos_, a guide to plant names described by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus (1708-1778), was the winner in CBHL's technical category, chosen both for its unique and substantive content combining history, biography, and scientific research as well as for its attractive design. "Today our need for stable knowledge about plants, including precise nomenclature, is urgently driven by population growth, increased consumption, habitat degradation, and other threats to the natural world that are causing us to lose plant species faster than we can identify them. . . . This book brings together a critical mass of information on the more than 9,000 plant names authored by Linnaeus in this 300th anniversary year of his birth." (Charlotte Tancin, Hunt Institute for Botanical Documentation, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh). The Linnean Society of London, publisher of _Order out of Chaos_, is a forum on natural history through debate, research, meetings, and publications as well as internationally important historical collections in the biological sciences. London's Natural History Museum promotes the discovery, understanding, enjoyment, and responsible use of the natural world. [Ordering information: Jarvis, Charlie. 2007. _Order Out of Chaos: Linnean Plant Names and their Types_. Linnean Society of London. 1016 p. ISBN-13: 9780950620770 - Hardcover. Price: approx. US $250.- See: http://www.nhbs.com/order_out_of_chaos_tefno_150742.html ] General Interest category: Sue Olsen's _Encyclopedia of Garden Ferns_ won CBHL's award in the general interest category. An internationally comprehensive reference to almost 1,000 ferns, most of which are shown in colour photographs, the book includes history and taxonomy as well as cultivation and propagation instructions. "For those not already fans of ferns, the author's infectious and informative style will convert . . . with that extra insight available only from a writer who knows her subject thoroughly." (Brian Thompson, Elisabeth C. Miller Library, University of Washington Botanic Gardens, Seattle). Timber Press (Portland, Ore.), publisher of _Encyclopedia of Garden Ferns_, publishes books on gardening, horticulture, garden design, sustainability, natural history, and the Pacific Northwest. [Ordering information: Olsen, Sue. 2007. _Encyclopedia of Garden Ferns_. Timber Press, Portland, Oregon. 444 p. (700 color photos, 4 b/w photos, 2 line drawings) ISBN-13: 9780881928198 - hardcover. Price: US $59.95 + shipping See: http://www.timberpress.com/books/isbn.cfm/9780881928198 The CBHL Literature Awards honour both the author and the publisher of works that make a significant contribution to the literature of botany and horticulture. This year's awards were announced June 4 in Grand Rapids, Michigan, during CBHL's annual meeting, hosted by the Frederik Meijer Gardens & Sculpture Park. CBHL is the leading professional organization in the field of botanical and horticultural information services. It recognizes the crucial importance of collecting, preserving, and making accessible the accumulated knowledge about plants for present and future generations. For more information, visit http://www.cbhl.net ARTHUR R. KRUCKEBERG: REMINISCENCES OF A JAPANESE LANGUAGE OFFICER From: Arthur R. Kruckeberg, Japanese Language School 1944. [This is a manuscript that Prof. W.A. Weber found in the University of Colorado (Boulder) library. Posted in BEN with Prof. A.R. Kruckeberg's permission.] War had already come to envelop all of us, months before my marriage. In fact, I was a bachelor grad student at Stanford University on that awful Sunday of Pearl Harbor (December 7, 1941); I was studying in my 5th floor Encina Hall room when it happened. It wasn't long after I married that I felt I should get involved in the War - and NOT as a buck private draftee. Some time in 1942, I had applied to the US Navy Japanese Language Program - to learn Japanese. The Navy was taking at first those US citizens (i.e. young men) who had grown up in Japan [and China]. The next round of trainees was to come from the pool of "egg-heads" with language aptitude and/or Phi Beta Kappa membership. I qualified on both latter counts! That was the start of a three year stint in the Navy. It began in a miasma of the enlisted man's fate on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. Here we got processed along with other raw recruits - sailors: they gave us our medicals, enlisted man's uniform, "short-arm" inspection, severe haircut, duffle bag, etc. My wife, Lyle, and I finally said goodbye to Palo Alto to head for Boulder Colorado, which would be our home for 14 months. The Navy Language School was housed on the campus of the University of Colorado, an idyllic setting with the east slope of the Rockies looming over the small city and campus. We found a fine place to live out the Boulder months, in the Pullman Apartments. Other Japanese Language families were neighbours: the Davises (Ewan & Harriet), Halsey Wilbur, Jean and Dean McKay. The Language Program was gruelling: six days a week with intensive sessions - reading, writing and speaking; then the showdown on Saturday - exam on the week's studies. Our instructors were mostly Japanese Americans (Nisei), including the head instructor, Professor Henry Tatsumi (Tatsumi had been the Japanese instructor at the University of Washington, a post to which he returned following the War). Our brief time outs [at Boulder] came on Saturday afternoon and Sunday - a little R&R, both locally and in Denver. I loved hiking in the foothills above Boulder, in the shadow of "The Flatirons", the tilted sandstone formations of the eastern Rockies. We would take infrequent trips to Denver, usually by train. The quaint Colorado & Southern RR had a branch line into Boulder. In fact the train backed into Boulder on its way from Cheyenne to Boulder. Our favorite "watering hole" in Denver was the Brown Palace Hotel, a grand old, vintage hostelry. Other limited diversions intruded on the perpetual "_Nihongo_" grind. All the Navy Language Officers partook of daily (or weekly?) _Und?_, a mix of callisthenics and for me, basketball. The exercise session was brief, usually held outside, between the language building [which one was that?] and the Gym. Some of us language students then finished off the _Und?_ session with a brisk pickup basketball game. Another diversion was a weekly all-student assembly, presided over by LT Conover [G. Kenneth] and the School's headmaster, Professor Tatsumi [Actually, Susumu Nakamura was the head instructor and Florence Walne was the director until Glenn Shaw replaced her, I believe Tatsumi _Sensei_ may have been Nakamura's deputy head instructor, but I have no evidence]. The only memory I have of these sessions was the singing of the JLS song . it will never go away!: "_Sekai no hakiri, oyobu made_". The assembled students persisted in giving the last three words a raucous ending, accenting the "_bu_"! I later met Professor Tatsumi at the University of Washington where we both served on the faculty, he as head of the Japanese language program and I in Botany. Professor Tatsumi had, in his later years at Washington, produced several small phrase books in Romaji Japanese. He set the type and printed the same at his home! Learning Japanese was an unrelenting challenge. We worked our way through six or so volumes of the _Naganuma Kaigun Tokuhon_ ("Navy Readers"). With the help of our Nisei instructors and several dictionaries, courtesy of the USN (I still have them!), we learned to write and decipher Kanji as well as Japanese script, Katakana and Hiragana. A major event of our Boulder months was the birth of our first daughter, Janet Muriel; she was born in Boulder Community Hospital on November 5, 1943. Janet was less than a year old when we left Boulder, first to Los Angeles, to leave Lyle and the baby with my parents, while I went off to the Pacific. My first tour of duty beyond Boulder was brief and illuminating, both from the Navy's and me-as-tourist standpoints. I was sent by train to New York City for a kind of "_Officer's Finishing School_" (by then I had my officer's commission, Ensign; out of gob's uniform as Yeoman 2nd Class, and into an officer's uniform with one stripe.) Few of the Navy's traditions and practices had intruded on the Language School agenda. So our Boulder graduating class, a gaggle of newly fledged ensigns, was to get a quick indoctrination. We were put up in the Henry Hudson Hotel, not far from Central Park. The brief encounter with Navy "regs," enemy aircraft recognition and basic shipboard protocol took two weeks, so coated with this thin veneer of Navy ritual and lore, I was assigned to my next post, Pearl Harbor; but not without a brief and final leave in San Francisco. Lyle and I were together again, for the last time until the War was over. We made the best of our brief togetherness in San Francisco: sightseeing and relaxing. Then we parted, Lyle back to my parents, the A.W. Kruckebergs and Janet, and me to Hawaii on a slow troop ship. Pearl Harbor had become the epicenter of Naval operations in the Pacific. I was assigned to a small "filament" in that complex network of intense activity - "an overkill". The unit, JICPOA (Joint Intelligence Center Pacific Ocean Area) was a stone's throw from CINCPAC, Admiral Nimitz's headquarters. I remember seeing the admiral out for a walk with his dog in the evenings. The JICPOA section to which I was assigned was the Captured Document Center. I was given the task of translating items on chemical warfare - presumably because I was a biologist. >From 1600 hours to midnight, my lot was the dull monotony of converting Japanese to English, with constant recourse to the Japanese/English dictionaries at hand. Daytime was much more to my liking, spiced up with social and academic contacts at the University of Hawaii. The campus was situated in Manoa Valley, just back of Honolulu. It was a lovely campus in those days, richly planted with tropical trees and shrubs. Botany at the University of Hawaii during wartime was a Spartan enterprise, only two faculty, Charles Engard (physiology and anatomy) and Harold St. John (taxonomy). St. John was away for most of the time I was there as one of the several botanists employed by the government to find new sources of cinchona bark for the antimalarial drug, quinine. A third botanist whom I got to know best was Isabella Abbott, an algologist and ethnobotanist. She knew Hawaiian flora very well. She, her husband Don, and I met again at Berkeley after the War. Izzie proved to be a great and long lasting friend. She is now back in Hawaii after many years at Hopkins Marine Station near Monterey, California. We still correspond. Besides TA-ing in general botany at the University, I could indulge in other botanical pursuits. Most memorable were hikes in the mountains back of Honolulu [Biologists and their nature hikes - like Bill Amos and Tom Polhemus].The Mt. Tantalus trail was the gateway to the remote cloud forests of the Koolau Range. I became rather adept at identifying the indigenous, often highly endemic flora. Dominating the lush slopes were the endemic acacia (_A. koa_, the useful Koa to Hawaiians) and _Aleurites mollucana_ (the candle tree). Ohia lehua, _Metrosideros_ spp., was also common. The view from the ridges of the Koolau Range was spectacular. I could look down on Honolulu, Diamond Head, and Pearl Harbor on the leeward side of the Range. Then on the Windward side was the grand view of the Kaneohe beaches at the foot of the precipitous, vegetated cliffs - the spectacular "pali". Hikes were mostly with Dr. Engard (Chuck), Eddie Hosaka and Dick Cowan. Dick was then a chubby young Seabee, later to become a well-known legume specialist and chair of botany at the Smithsonian. After several months of duty at Pearl Harbor (and fun and games at the University), I was shipped out for sea duty with the 3rd Amphibious Group, commanded by Admiral Connelly. My assignment on his flagship, the USS Appalachian, (AGC-1), was to serve as Japanese language officer on the intelligence staff; I must have set sail from Pearl Harbor. Our unit within the larger 3rd Fleet was a motley mix of attack transport ships, used to carry troops and provide landing craft for amphibious landings in the central and western Pacific. My duties were simple, at first . before our first landing operation. I "stood watch" along with the other officers of the intelligence section of the Admiral's flag staff. Lt. Cdr. Stevenson was the officer in charge of our close-knit group. Watch duties were routine: logging in radio messages transmitted to our flotilla. Only months later did we conduct our true mission - landing troops on Japanese-held islands. After bypassing some of the lesser known Japanese strongholds, such as Yap, Palau, etc., did we finally see action - the Battle of the Philippines. General Douglas MacArthur had vowed to return to the Philippines. It was our naval duty to help retake the islands, via bombardment and landing troops. The first assault was on the southern island of Leyte. This was a major operation with spectacular and massive naval and air bombardment of enemy island positions. Witnessing the assault on Leyte from the deck of our ship was a terrifyingly grand spectacle [As Robert.E. Lee said, looking at the carnage on the field of Fredericksburg, "It is well that war is so terrible, otherwise we should grow too fond of it"]. Several nearby ships were either severely damaged or sunk by the then common suicidal stratagem of Japanese pilots - kamikaze, dive-bombing smack into our vessels. On the third day of the battle, MacArthur went ashore to utter those historical words, "I have returned." During this major landing operation and successful taking of Japanese positions on the island, I was called upon to use my Japanese language, mostly to interrogate Japanese prisoners. One night, en route to Leyte, I was sent to the radio room to monitor enemy voice radio - I utterly failed at this - too fast and too cryptic! After the liberation of Philippines, our fleet moved up to Manila Harbor on the Island of Luzon. There we began "staging" for the final assault and landing on the Japanese islands proper. Botany was not wholly forsaken while I was at sea. I could get ashore from time to time: New Guinea, the Admiralty Islands and the Philippines (mostly Leyte and Luzon) [Sounds too much like Patrick O'Brian's Aubrey/Maturin Napoleonic War sea tales, the naturalist Maturin going ashore to exotic isles to seek flora and fauna specimens.]. While we were in Manila Harbor, I got ashore to dabble in botany in an around Manila and southward on Luzon. Parts of Manila had been destroyed by the intense fighting. Somewhere in my Naval archives, I have a photograph of me standing in the totally devastated Manila Botanic Garden . only the sign remained! Somehow I was able to contact a prominent Philippine botanist, Dr. Eduardo Quisumbing, a most cordial gentleman. Beside visits to his home and his fine collection of orchids (growing outdoors!), he took me on a memorable trip south of Manila. Our main objective was Mt. Maquiling National Park, south of Los Banos. It was a bewilderingly rich tropical rainforest, made a bit scary by the few Japanese soldiers who has not yet surrendered. We stopped at Los Banos, which had been a flourishing Agricultural Experiment Station until the Japanese had turned it into a POW camp. Our fleet moved from Manila Bay north to Subic Bay, the long-standing base for the US Navy. But that was not to be. Instead, the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki brought it all to an end. I was on board the USS Appalachian when we got word about the bombings. Having no inkling of the A-Bomb or the magnitude of the devastating impact on the two Japanese cities, we innocents there at Subic Bay simply were thankful that the bombing had brought an end to the War. The din of whistles and guns firing in Subic Bay that day celebrated the end of the conflict. But getting to come home was not immediate by a long shot! With my modest proficiency in Japanese, I was put to use in the occupation efforts. Shortly after the historic surrender ceremony aboard the USS Missouri in Yokohama Harbor, I was attached to a small party of officers from the USS Appalachian who were charged with preparing the Japanese island of Hokkaido for occupation by the 80th Army Division. We were flown from Manila to Sapporo (in a DC-3) where I was to serve as interpreter between the US Naval officers and Japanese port officials. We stayed a few nights in the old Grand Hotel in the capital city, Sapporo. Many years later, in 1985, I revisited Sapporo and the new Grand Hotel, which keeps a memento museum room of the old western-style hotel. I remember vividly walking the then forlorn streets of this, the biggest city on the Island. As we would saunter down the street near the Hotel, Japanese women would scurry to the other side. It seems that Japanese propaganda had made us enemy gaijin into ravishing, rape-bent fiends. A few days later we went by special train (on our own, with cases of Sapporo beer!) to the harbour cities of Hakodate and Otaru. The readiness and willingness of the Japanese civilian authorities to cooperate fully was both surprising and reassuring. Our last stint on Hokkaido was a celebratory event, staged at the famous hot springs resort of Josankai. We had a festive, even a bit riotous, evening in the Japanese hotel, complete with "liberated" Japanese Scotch whiskey and beer; as well, the scene was embellished by the presence of Geisha girls. I had quite a time keeping our naval "bucks" in order; they mistook the pristine Geisha for Joro (whores). After Hokkaido, there was still no "mustering out" for this language officer! I was shipped out to the Marianas Islands (Saipan and Tinian). There, many Japanese, Okinawan and Korean civilians remained, farm labourers interned by US forces. Their repatriation was our task. Two of us, Lt. Arthur Szathmary [an emeritus philosophy professor at Princeton University] and I, served as interpreters for the Navy's liaison with interned civilians. The camp at Tinian was a thriving enterprise with several "cottage industries": sake, shoyu sauce and GI-tourist trinkets. Our family cribbage board came from Camp Churo. Tinian had been mostly pacified by then [Telfer Mook had started a school for its children.]. So on off-duty times I would - you guessed it - botanize in the hills surrounding the sugar cane. I also enjoyed a bit of R&R on the fine sandy beaches, bathing in the tepid tropical waters. Finally, I got my orders to muster out . to become a civilian again, the "decommissioning of ARK" took place near Los Angeles, so I could be home with my family and parents easily. I was eager to rejoin my young family, wife Lyle and two daughters. This final lap of my Navy career took place some time in early 1946. After becoming a civilian again, it was my intent to return to academic life. The GI Bill generously offered that opportunity . and challenge. My application for graduate study was accepted by the University of California at Berkeley. So in the fall of 1946, I began graduate work towards a Ph.D. in Botany. In 1950, with doctorate in hand, I began a lifetime career in plant ecology and systematics at the University of Washington, reaching retirement at that Seattle institution in 1989. Still, I continue an active life as a plant scientist. Over the years my modest expertise in _Nihongo_ faded. But I am still in possession of some conversational competence. In 1989, I returned to Japan for a botanical tour of the archipelago, spending three summer months from Shikoku to Honshu, all the way to the northern tip of Hokkaido. Friendly Japanese botanists greatly facilitated that tour. And what modest Japanese I had retained was both useful and appreciated by the Japanese people I encountered. "_Nihon no shokubutsu wa taihen omoshiroi'n deshta!_" ["Japanese plants were very interesting."] ________________________________________________________________ Subscriptions: http://victoria.tc.ca/mailman/listinfo/ben-l Send submissions to aceska@telus.net BEN is archived at http://www.ou.edu/cas/botany-micro/ben/ ________________________________________________________________ From aceska at telus.net Fri Jul 25 06:13:29 2008 From: aceska at telus.net (Adolf Ceska) Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 22:13:29 -0700 Subject: [BEN-L]BEN # 398 Message-ID: <001301c8ee15$2d4a5830$87df0890$@net> 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. 398 July 24, 2008 aceska@telus.net Victoria, B.C. ----------------------------------------------------------- Dr. A. Ceska, P.O.Box 8546, Victoria, B.C. Canada V8W 3S2 ----------------------------------------------------------- A. PETER WHARTON (1951-2008) From: Douglas Justice [douglas.justice@ubc.ca] A. Peter Wharton, curator of the David C. Lam Asian Garden at the University of British Columbia (UBC) Botanical Garden, died on June 30th 2008. He had contracted melanoma, which went undiagnosed until this spring, when it had already spread into his vital organs and at which point treatment was ineffective. Peter spent the greater part of his life developing the Asian Garden, a singularly beautiful garden filled with plants both subtle and spectacular, all skillfully arranged within the native Point Grey forest. Many would say that UBC's Asian Garden is the Botanical Garden's signature garden, and it is not hyperbole to say that Peter's garden is famous around the world. The plants that grace the Asian Garden represent many things fundamental to Peter's vision and ethic. Most of the species represented are grown from seed collected in the wild, and many of those, Peter collected himself over the various expeditions he took to China, Korea and Vietnam. Some of the plants in the garden are rare or threatened in their native habitats, and Peter was a strong advocate for using the garden's collections to promote conservation. His expeditions were always collaborative ventures and the fruits of the relationships Peter fostered with plant explorers, scientists and garden professionals around the world are seen in many other gardens, in his writing and especially, of course, in the Asian Garden. Peter graduated with a forestry degree from the University of North Wales, Bangor, U.K. in 1973, before training as an arborist at the Merrist Wood Agricultural College, Guildford, Surrey, U.K. He emigrated to Canada in 1975 and has spent 30 years working at UBC. Peter has led or participated in nine field expeditions to China, South Korea and northern Vietnam. Lately, his prime focus was the conservation of the uniquely bio-diverse forests of southern Yunnan and border areas of Vietnam and Burma. Peter was married with three children and lived in south Surrey, B.C. Peter Wharton was a passionate and eloquent advocate for plants and their habitats, an enormously creative gardener and expert plantsman, a great teacher and a smart, generous individual. He'll be sorely missed. A celebration of Peter's life will be held at the Botanical Garden later this summer. CIRCUMBOREAL VEGETATION MAPPING (CBVM) WORKSHOP - 1ST ANNOUNCEMENT From: Stephen S. Talbot [Stephen_Talbot@fws.gov] A Circumboreal Vegetation Mapping Workshop will be held in Helsinki, Finland, 3-6 November 2008. Further information may be found at www.cbvm.org . The CBVM mission is to develop a global map of the circumboreal forest biome with a common legend. The workshop aims at developing a strategy to map the circumboreal vegetation including most of the watersheds emptying into the Arctic Basin . To develop a common strategy within all countries containing portions of the boreal zone, selected subjects will be discussed during the workshop about the limits of the boreal zone, key environmental factors to be considered, climate, vegetation distribution, disturbance regimes and vegetation mapping methods. During this workshop, scientists from all 13 countries containing boreal vegetation are invited to participate in identifying the mapping strategy. Nordic vegetation mappers will also provide support in terms of experience and technical expertise to ensure a successful workshop. Nordic competence was previously demonstrated in the production of the Map of the Natural Vegetation of Europe and the Circumpolar Arctic Vegetation Map (CAVM). The CBVM project will strengthen personal and institutional networks as Nordic scientists cooperate in sharing their knowledge to produce a circumboreal vegetation map. Papers related to the conference topics are invited for submission. Abstracts must be sent to cbvm@nemoralis.ca before August 20, 2008. For more information contact: Stephen S. Talbot U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service 1011 East Tudor Road Anchorage, AK 99503 USA Tel: +1 907 786 3381 Fax: +1 907 786 3905 E-mail: stephen_talbot@fws.gov MULTI-SCALE TRAJECTORY ANALYSIS: A POWERFUL CONCEPTUAL TOOL FOR UNDERSTANDING CHANGE IN VEGETATION STUDIES From: Laszlo Orloci [laszlo.orloci@gmail.com] This note is intended to inform you of significant developments in the conceptualization and analysis of vegetation dynamics. Over the past so many years we published papers on this topic under the umbrella title "Multi-scale trajectory analysis: a powerful conceptual tool for understanding change ". I completed recently an overview of concepts and detailed description of techniques in an essay with many numerical examples to firmly ground MTA in applied vegetation research. MTA is well suited for the pursuit of local and global studies of change because of its multivariate and multi-scale nature. Target disciplines include paleobotany, paleoecology, evolutionary biology, temporal or time-static pattern analysis, ecological edge detection, and any other discipline that draws conclusions from temporal or time-static serial observations. To download the essay and related published papers please go to URL www.vegetationdynamics.com and follow the links. The model at the basis of trajectory analysis is conceptually simple. When applied to time series vegetation data, the projectile becomes surrogate for vegetation state, the trajectory for the evolving vegetation process, and the properties of the trajectory for the true process characteristics. Notwithstanding its simplicity, the model is well-defined under natural circumstances and easily adapted to serial data, irrespective of source. As a major advantage, compared to other models that isolate the elementary processes and probe dynamics for informative regularities on the elementary levels, the trajectory model allows multi-scale probing for regularities at highest process integrity. A rich list of key references are included in the essay and volumes of supplementary information in a Web Based Appendices, also downloadable from URL www.vegetationdynamics.com. Keywords include attractor migration, determinism, periodicity, phase structure, shape complexity (fractal dimension), parallelism, postdiction, prediction, pattern. I hope you will find the Essay interesting. Do ask me if clarifications are required or guidance in implementations. Please use e-mail for communications (lorloci@uwo.ca). GIVING A GENTLE KISS TO EVERY SEDGE From: Adolf Ceska [aceska@telus.net] Wilson, Barbara L., R. Brainerd, D. Lytjen, B. Newhouse, & N. Otting of the _Carex_ Working Group. 2008. _Field guide to the Sedges of the Pacific Northwest._ Oregon State University Press, Corvallis, OR. 432 p. ISBN-13: 978-0-87071-197-8 [soft cover] Price: US$35.00 Ordering information: Available in book stores or by calling 1-800-426-3797 This is the best guide to sedges I have ever seen. It covers 153 species (or 163, if you count all the species, subspecies and varieties) in the genus Carex (and Kobresia) that occur in Oregon and Washington. A two-page layout gives all the relevant information for each species (subspecies, variety, resp.): Nomenclature, Synonymy, Section of the key, where the species pops up, Key Features, Description, Habitat and Distribution, Identification Tips, & Comments. The page opposite to the text page gives illustrations of plant habit, important details and a general view of each species' habitat. Almost all of more than 650 illustrations are colour photographs, When necessary, some line drawings were used, some from the classical Mackenzie's (1940) _North American Cariceae_, quite a few by Jeanne R. Janish from Hitchcock et al. 1968 _Vascular Plants of the Pacific Northwest_ and from other various sources. Nevertheless, the largest part of illustrations are the high quality photographs. The distribution of each taxon in Oregon and Washington is illustrated with a small map where small yellow dots represent the sites of each treated taxon. Looking at those maps, I realized how much information is in the dot maps that is lost if you do a general range maps. From a dot map, you can read not only the species' distribution, but also its abundance, etc. I found my name in the acknowledgement and I have to acknowledge that my help was minimal. In turn, I am finding an information new to me on every page of this superb guide. The Guide is dedicated to Danna Lytjen, one of the co-authors who died before the Guide was published. Now the criticism: The title of this guide is wrong! In my definition, the Pacific Northwest includes not only Oregon and Washington, but also SE Alaska, British Columbia, western Montana, Idaho and (you can dispute the borders) northern California. This is the field guide to sedges of OREGON and WASHINGTON. The title is a false advertisement. Never mind that I agree with the authors that it has relevance to the whole Pacific Northwest as we know it, but it is a subset of it. Mind you, this pinnacle of sedge studies is one of the most useful sedge guides wherever you go in the Pacific Northwest, but forget the sale gimmick, it is definitive only for the Oregon and Washington area. This is a superb work. To paraphrase Shakespeare, the authors gave a gentle kiss to every sedge they treated in this guide. Congratulations! ________________________________________________________________ Subscriptions: http://victoria.tc.ca/mailman/listinfo/ben-l Send submissions to aceska@telus.net BEN is archived at http://www.ou.edu/cas/botany-micro/ben/ ________________________________________________________________