| BEN |
| BOTANICAL ELECTRONIC NEWS |
|---|
| ISSN 1188-603X |
| No. 523 November 15, 2017 | aceska@telus.net | Victoria, B.C. |
|---|
Dr. George Krumlik passed away peacefully at home in Velešín, Czech Republic, on the afternoon of November 1, 2017. He was born in 1942 and obtained a forestry diploma from the Prague University of Agriculture in 1964. He subsequently worked with Karel Klinka at the Forest State Research Station in Karlovy Vary.
George emigrated to Canada after five Warsaw Pact nations invaded the former Czechoslovakia on August 21, 1968. He spent some time in Toronto then moved to Vancouver and studied nutrient cycling in the Coastal Western Hemlock and Mountain Hemlock biogeoclimatic zones under Dr. Hamish Kimmins of the Faculty of Forestry at UBC. George received his MSc and PhD degrees in 1974 and 1979 respectively and later became a Registered Professional Forester in British Columbia.
George worked for the Canadian Forest Service at the Northern Forestry Centre in Edmonton with Dr. Satoru Kojima, was a consultant and then had a 20-year long posting with the Research Branch of the B.C. Forest Service in Victoria until retirement in 2003. In B.C. he studied the survival and growth of conifers and worked with many headquarters specialists, regional staff and consultants - establishing research plots, analyzing data and publishing reports.
George was an extension specialist later in his career. That included breaking new ground designing and managing Research Branch's website when such entities were in their infancy and not yet proven for communication and information dissemination. In retirement George moved back to his homeland and continued his interests in Czech and European history, economics and human behaviour. He worked with students who were preparing to begin studies or work in the United Kingdom, helping them with proficiency in English as a second language. He also assisted with the translation of several books from Czech to English, or vice versa.
George had a number of chronic health issues during his last two decades. They limited his activities more and more as time progressed but he dealt with them using a rational approach to understanding and finding meaning in life.
Into the earth, so beautiful, so beloved,
His cradle and grave, the womb that gave him birth,
His sweet, sole land, his heritage given,
In the generous earth, the single, holy earth,
Into the mother's heart the blood of her son is flowing on.
--Karel Hynek Macha Maj 1836
Malcolm grew up in Essex on the outskirts of London, England. In his early teens he became interested in plants after seeing a book of flora with detailed identification descriptions. A chance encounter with one of the books by Frank Kingdon Ward on searching for rare and exotic plants in S.E. Asia spurred a lifelong interest in botany and in exploring new areas for such plants.
After school he briefly worked for the Forestry Commission in London. During these years he served his National Service with the Royal Norfolk Regiment, including a year in Korea where he managed to study and sketch some of the flowering plants. He finally settled in Calgary for 13 years where he worked as a research analyst in the stock market for a large Canadian agricultural and food industry company. During this time he met his wife Carol, and in 1970 they moved to British Columbia. First to Lumby, then in 1975 to Coldstream where they settled for nearly 30 years. Here they initially grew perennial plants and specialty vegetables and fruit, gradually converting to decorative dried flowers and grasses for which they are still remembered. Both he and Carol were instrumental in setting up the Farmer's Market in Vernon where they sold their garden produce and products.
Malcolm joined NONC (The North Okanagan Naturalists' Club) the year he moved to Coldstream (1975). A fellow member, Jim Grant, loaned him the five volume Hitchcock et al. Vascular Plants of the Pacific Northwest which was known as the bible of botany at that time. In the early 1980s the Club decided a Guide Book to the Natural History of Kalamalka Lake Provincial Park was needed. A number of members including Malcolm, Jim Grant, Peter Legg, and Joan Herriot took on the huge task of making observations throughout the park over the four seasons; then writing, illustrating, listing and identifying the flora and fauna. It was a tribute to their dedication, time, and effort.
Next, Malcolm took on the compilation of baseline studies of each of the Ecological Reserves established in and around the North Okanagan. He compiled plant, bird, spider, reptile and mammal species lists for Lily Pad, Griffin Mountain, Mara Meadows, Campbell-Brown and Trinity Valley Ecological Reserves. Later, he compiled plant inventory lists for many of the properties managed by Parks BC (Thompson River Region) from the Fraser Canyon in the south to Blue River in the north. Each winter he took the summer-collected specimens from the ecological reserves to Arizona to work on identification.
On completion of these reports Malcolm became Warden of Cougar Canyon Ecological Reserve. In Arizona his interest and studies of the desert resulted in his writing on the winter ecology of one region for the Bureau of Land Management in Phoenix.
Through this period of years Malcolm acted on the Conservation Committee, either alone or with a few colleagues, producing draft letters to politicians for the NONC board to consider and use if appropriate; as well as drafting briefs and submissions on environmental matters.
Malcolm first met Ernie McNaughton on a club outing to Kalamalka Park and asked if he might come and look at the various interesting plants he had heard about in Ernie's backyard. Following that first 'outing' they began meeting each Tuesday, hiking and exploring widely throughout the Okanagan and Thompson area for rare and unknown plants. Their weekly trips lasted for nearly 20 years beginning in the mid-1980s. Each year they submitted their findings of Red- and Blue-listed or Rare plants to the Conservation Data Centre (Ministry of Environment) which transferred the information to their records, and then deposited the specimens at the Royal British Columbia Museum herbarium. At one point they had contributed over 800 specimens of mostly Red- or Blue-listed plants. It's quite amazing that over a 15 year period 25 percent of all new locations of BC rare plants entered into the Conservation Data Centre were by Ernie and Malcolm. Some of these rare species were "firsts" for BC. Along with Ernie, Malcolm has been among the most prolific collectors of rare plants in BC history.
Malcolm and Ernie were asked to review and proof read several new botanical books including an eight volume series "Illustrated Flora of British Columbia". They also provided the editor with both manuscript corrections and range information. They were both acknowledged in each volume. Malcolm also contributed to the "Electronic Atlas of the Flora of British Columbia" and helped with the processing and proofreading of text for "The Lichens of BC", by Trevor Goward, where he is also acknowledged.
He provided helpful suggestions to a number of publications by others and enjoyed responding with information and specimens to occasional requests for assistance arriving from institutions and degree students from as far away as Europe. Sometimes these strayed from botany to include insects (Praying Mantis and White-rumped Bumble Bee) and mammals (Badger). As a director for the Native Plant Society of BC he wrote many articles for the botanical periodical "Menziesia". Later he was asked to write a Status Report on Mexican Mosquito Fern (Azolla mexicana), one of the rare plants found in British Columbia, for COSEWIC (committee on the Status of Endangered Wildlife in Canada).
In 2004 Malcolm became the first recipient of the Outstanding Naturalist Award from The Federation of BC Naturalists (now BC Nature). This award was established for contribution to the knowledge, understanding and appreciation of the natural history of BC.
He had given advice on the local grasslands at Allan Brooks Nature Centre and over the years had assisted with weeding the invasive plants along with the plantings of natural shrubs and trees. He had been foremost in controlling purple loosestrife in the Vernon area and over a 17 year period he was a one man warrior on the track of this very invasive weed. He continued to monitor its efforts to re-establish itself. Thus it was no surprise that in 2009 he was nominated by NONC for the Environmental Leadership Award for Invasive Plants Control which he received from Vernon and the North Okanagan Regional District. At the ceremony he was presented with both the Award and a large bouquet of purple loosestrife!
[To the Royal British Columbia Museum, Malcolm Martin donated close to 600 herbarium specimens of vascular plants and over 200 collections of arthropods, mostly spiders and few dragonflies.]
On October 10th, we submitted the final draft of Flora of the Pacific Northwest, 2nd edition to the University of Washington Press. We're pleased to have reached this milestone after more than four years of revising old keys, writing new ones, and generating over 1,300 new botanical illustrations for the more than 1,100 additional taxa to be included in the 2nd edition.
Currently the book is being composed by UW Press staff from the text and image files that we provided. In the next month or two we will receive galley proofs of the completed book to review one last time for typos, layout problems, or other mistakes that we did not catch.
We are optimistic that the book will be in print and available for purchase in Spring 2018. The exact timeline for book production and printing is out of our hands, but we will pass along any updated information that we receive about it.
Thanks to everyone for their myriad forms of help and support in getting us to this point.
I would like to announce that our new all-digital field guide A Guide to the Mosses and Liverworts of Alberta Peatlands is now available online.
This guide, with text by Dale Vitt and photos by Michael Lüth, and edited by Jeannine Goehing and Bin Xu can be downloaded free from two sources: 1) http://www.nait.ca/100081.htm - link under 'field guide', or 2) from http://ResearchGate.net/ under Dale H. Vitt's page.
The Guide contains color photos, taxonomic and ecological notes, a key, and glossary to 60 bryophytes found in Alberta peatlands, and can be used for the whole North American boreal area. It was published by the Northern Alberta Institute of Technology through the Boreal Research Institute.
Please check out the new digital photo library of Pacific Northwest microlichens, hosted by Oregon Digital, a service of the Oregon State University Library: https://oregondigital.org/sets/lichens-pnw/
This collection currently has 5216 photos. Most of the specimens are from the Pacific Northwest of North America. Most of the photos were taken through a dissecting or compound microscope.
The collection is a companion to the 2017, 2-volume book on Microlichens of the Pacific Northwest. For more information on these volumes, visit the publisher, Wild Blueberry Media.
The photo library is so new that the web crawlers haven't found it yet, so for the time being, to search for a particular species it is more efficient to do it within the Oregon Digital library than through a regular search engine. But eventually your searches should start finding this through your usual search engine.
Corrections are welcome.
Kroeger, P. & Berch, S.M. 2017. Macrofungus species of British Columbia. Prov. B.C., Victoria, B.C. Tech. Rep. 108. http://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/pubs/Docs/Tr/TR108.htm
Over the past few years, efforts have been made to compile a current list of British Columbia's macrofungi species. In this report, Paul Kroeger and Shannon Berch list 3009 species of macrofungi, 90% of which are represented by specimens in either of British Columbia's fungal herbaria-the Forest Pathology Herbarium at the Pacific Forestry Centre, or the University of British Columbia Herbarium Fungal Collection. Because exploration of the province for macrofungi is ongoing and research is continuing to clarify the identity of species thought to occur here, this list is not yet complete. Periodic updating of the list is therefore warranted. https://www.for.gov.bc.ca/hfd/pubs/Docs/Tr/TR108.PDF
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/