| BEN |
| BOTANICAL ELECTRONIC NEWS |
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| ISSN 1188-603X |
| No. 274 October 6, 2001 | aceska@freenet.victoria.tc.ca | Victoria, B.C. |
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[Text of the citation read by the CBA/ABC President Joseph F. Gerrath during the awards ceremony at Kelowna, June 26, 2001.]
The Lawson Medal is the most prestigious award given by the Canadian Botanical Association/L'Association botanique du Canada and is named in honour of George Lawson, regarded as Canada's first professional botanist. This year the Medal is given in recognition of cumulative, lifetime contributions to Canadian botany by a senior researcher and teacher. This person would be a strong candidate for being called "Mr. Canadian Mycology", but he does have a name, which should be familiar to everyone here. In his letter to me accepting the Medal, he wrote, regarding his name, that, "it is, as far as I am aware, unique among biologists". Indeed, there is only one Bryce Kendrick.
Bryce received his Ph.D. from the University of Liverpool in 1958 and then spent several years as NRC Postdoctoral Fellow and Research Scientist at the Plant Research Institute in Ottawa. In 1965 he joined the faculty at the University of Waterloo and remained there until his retirement in 1994, becoming Full Professor in 1971 and Associate Dean for Graduate Affairs in 1985. He is now Distinguished Professor Emeritus at Waterloo and was, until recently, an Adjunct Professor at the University of Victoria. Although retired, he continues to teach Mycology, as a distance education course, using his universally admired textbook, The Fifth Kingdom, which is now available in a CD ROM Version. For this course, I am told that Bryce has constructed one of the largest Mycological websites: http://www.mycolog.com/ Bryce was also very active in establishing the Southern Vancouver Island Mycological Society and has lead many fungal forays for this group, as well as serving terms as President and Newsletter Editor.
22 Graduate students have completed their degree research under his supervision and he has been author or coauthor of some 217 publications, with more on the way [both students and publications]. During his long career Bryce has received many academic awards and distinctions:
And now I am very pleased to ask Bryce Kendrick to come to the podium to receive his Lawson Medal.
The alpine and parts of the subalpine vegetation of Glacier National Park, Montana, USA, are investigated using the European phytosociological method of Braun-Blanquet. Based on data of about 700 detailed plot samples, a syntaxonomical classification is presented.
The holarctic classes Carici rupestris-Kobresietea bellardii Ohba 1974, Thlaspietea rotundifolii Br.-Bl. 1947, and Salicetea herbaceae Br.-Bl. 1947 reasonably accommodate the Glacier NP alpine vegetation. Local units have been organised in 3 classes, 6 orders, 12 alliances, 32 associations, 26 subassociations, 10 variants, and 7 other communities. For each of these, detailed descriptions are provided. Syntaxonomical rank and circumscription, chorology, ecology, and succession dynamics are discussed.
In order to classify the alpine vegetation of Glacier NP, an area much wider than the original study area had to be reviewed, covering the Rocky Mountains south of 53 deg. N, and including the interior ranges to the west and the western coastal mountains north of central Oregon. An overview of western North American alpine vegetation units is presented by means of synoptic tables. Drawn from these tables are conclusions for the syntaxonomic system of the western North American alpine.
In the Carici-Kobresietea, a new order of alpine fellfield communities, Arenario obtusilobae-Festucetalia brachyphyllae ord. nov., is created, comprising a southern and a north-central suborder. In the snowbed class Salicetea herbaceae, a western North American subclass, Junco drummondii-Sibbaldienea procumbentis subclass. nov. is created, which holds four orders. These are Caricetalia nigricantis ord. nov., Sibbaldio-Caricetalia pyrenaicae Komarkova 1979, Phyllodoco-Cassiopetalia Brooke et al. ex Damm, and Valerianetalia sitchensis Brett et al. ex Damm. The Caricetalia nigricantis and the Valerianetalia sitchensis are divided into a western-coastal and interior cordilleran alliance each.
A number of previously described units are validated according to the Code of Phytosociological Nomenclature (CPN) or newly combined into the present system.
In the summer of 1996, Trevor Goward of Enlichened Consulting Ltd., Clearwater, B.C., was asked to conduct an inventory of canopy lichens for the Coastal Montane Biodiversity Project: http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/research/comonbio/webhome.htm On three of the sites "rigged" for canopy access by Dr. Neville Winchester for his canopy arthropods study, branches were collected for an inventory of the lichens. The branches, which averaged roughly 2.5 cm diameter, and were in the order of 50-100 years old, were collected in the upper Coastal Western Hemlock Zone and Mountain Hemlock Zone between 700 m and 1200 m elevation.
Branches from the low, mid and high canopy of one hemlock (Tsuga heterophylla or Tsuga mertensiana) and one amabilis fir tree (Abies amabilis) on each site were examined. Lichen species that could be reliably recognized at sight were assessed for abundance. A brief summary of the results is as follows.
A total of 145 taxa were collected. The taxa with confirmed identification are as follows:
* = Present in Mountain Hemlock Zone (including parkland)