| BEN |
| BOTANICAL ELECTRONIC NEWS |
|---|
| ISSN 1188-603X |
No. 124 January 13, 1996
A summary table is provided of trees and large shrubs (> 3 m high) that were validated as nodulating, and known or presumed to fix nitrogen. The summary is derived from NFTA's expanded database that includes about 1500 taxa. Only one family that includes nodulating plants, the Datiscaceae, does not appear in this table, as the genus Datisca lacks arboreal or woody forms.
Most of the 115 genera of N-fixing trees and shrubs (NFT) are legumes. As calculated by de Faria et. al. (1989) nodulation characterized 23% of 349 tested caesalpinioid species, 90% of 454 tested mimosoids and 97% of the 2592 papilionids.
Nodulation involves symbiosis with rhizobial bacteria in the legume and in the genus Parasponia (and possibly other taxa in the Ulmaceae). All other non-leguminous genera are nodulated by actinomycetes of the genus Frankia.
Note: First number is the number of species validated as NFT's; second is number of species in the genus.
The conference "Peatlands for people" is organized by the Burns Bog Conservation Society. Its goal is "to explore and advance multi-stakeholder actions for achieving sustainability of world's disappearing peatlands."
The conference "Peatlands for people" is organized by the Burns Bog Conservation Society. Its goal is "to explore and advance multi-stakeholder actions for achieving sustainability of world's disappearing peatlands."
The speakers will include Jim Pojar (rare aquatic and wetland plants), Allen Banner (peatlands in British Columbia), Richard Hebda (discussion on Burns Bog), Martin Gabauer (Sandhill Cranes in Burns Bog), Anne Brown (methane production in peatlands), Ralph May (use of peatlands for cranberry farming), Tony Cable (peatlands and peat extraction), Alison Gail (eco-sites and tourism within metropolitan communities). The well known English botanist, writer and TV personality Dr. David Bellamy was invited as a keynote speaker (Celebration of mires/peatlands).
For more information contact:
Burns Bog Conservation Society
Phone: 604-572-0373, FAX: 604-572-0374
Tuesday, January 16, 1996: Botany Night - Del Meidinger "Forest Ecologist in SE Asia" - Swan Lake Nature House, 7:30 p.m.
Thursday, January 18, 1996: Native Plant Group of the Victoria Horticulture Society - Adolf Ceska "Rare plants of southern Vancouver Island and their protection" - University of Victoria, Clearihue Building, Room A 215, 7:00 p.m.
The Internet grew up in such an unregulated way that no one really knows exactly how much is really out there in cyberspace. As any net user will tell you, trying to find what you want can be difficult and time-consuming. There is no comprehensive Internet telephone book that allows you to look up someones's net address (URL).
So what can the baffled netsurfer do? If you want to find a web page related to your favourite group etc., you crawl. Crawling the web in search of URLs Usenet or newsgroups is a serious business. A search engine is the name given to the programs and Internet resources dedicated to crawling. Some are commercial, others are free.
http://fuzine.mt.cs.cmu.edu/
Lycos - the king of the online search engines. This massive database, maintained by Carnegie Mellon University, is the first place you should go to on your web search.
http://www.yahoo.com [revised 8/21/96]
Yahoo web crawler has the only disadvantage that it is biased towards US sites. European web sites often fail to get recognized or fail to post their URL.
http://harvest.transarc.com/ [revised 10/8/96]
Harvest contains more than 25,000 3w sites with fewer duplications than Lycos.
http://celtic.stanford.edu/vlib/Overview2.html [revised 8/29/97]
This is the WWW-Virtual Library listing of all topics covered. These are among the most essential and powerful search tools on the net.
http://cui_www.unige.ch/w3catalog
CUI index is mainatined by the Centre Universitaire d'Informatique in Geneva. It is a well maintained database which allows you to search existing web catalogues and produce detailed summaries and links. It has around 13,000 entries so you should have no trouble getting what you need.
For those folks with Web access the PLANTS database allows the downloading of a list of Washington state plants from the following URL:
http://trident.ftc.nrcs.usda.gov/plants/staselec.html
The data file can be imported into any spreadsheet, database, or word processor. (If you are lucky enough to use a Macintosh, you can use the shareware macro program TypeIt4Me to allow you to type the abbreviation (symbol) of the name and have the Mac enter the full name automatically within any program.)
The text of the web page follows:
PLANTS State Data Download Screen
Information:
The reports contain the symbol, scientific name, accepted name/common name, and family. The data is in ascii text format with fields enclosed in double quotes and delimited by commas. The files are not compressed.
Data:
| Alabama | Kansas | New Mexico | Virginia |
| Alaska | Kentucky | New York | Washington |
| Arkansas | Louisiana | North Carolina | West Virginia |
| Arizona | Maine | North Dakota | Wisconsin |
| California | Maryland | Ohio | Wyoming |
| Colorado | Massachusetts | Oklahoma | American Samoa |
| Connecticut | Michigan | Oregon | Guam |
| Delaware | Minnesota | Pennsylvania | Palau |
| Florida | Mississippi | Rhode Island | Puerto Rico |
| Georgia | Missouri | South Carolina | US Minor Outlying | Hawaii | Montana | South Dakota | Islands |
| Idaho | Nebraska | Tennessee | Virgin Islands |
| Illinois | Nevada | Texas | Fed. S. Micronesia |
| Indiana | New Hampshire | Utah | Marshall Islands |
| Iowa | New Jersey | Vermont | N Mariana Islands |
Copyright Information:
The data found in PLANTS for the plants known to occur within North America were provided under a cooperative agreement by John Kartesz and his staff at the Biota of North America Program (BONAP). Portions of these data are copyrighted (© 1994) by John Kartesz, Biota of North America Program. The copyright notice must be preserved on all copies. Cooperator derived data that is altered by the user cannot redistribute it as PLANTS data. All users of PLANTS data are to acknowledge the contributions made
Beginning in January 1996, the ASPT Newsletter will no longer be distributed as hard copy. It will be posted quarterly on a World Wide Web (WWW) Server maintained by the NMNH, Smithsonian Institution. [changed to Texas A & M subsequently] The following URL will bring you directly to the ASPT Web Page and Newsletter (http://www.csdl.tamu.edu/FLORA/aspt/aspthome.htm). [revised 8/21/96]
Submissions, subscriptions, etc.: aceska@freenet.victoria.bc.ca.
BEN is archived on gopher freenet.victoria.bc.ca. The URL is:
gopher://freenet.victoria.bc.ca:70/11/environment/Botany/ben
Also archived at http://www.ou.edu/cas/botany-micro/ben/