| BEN |
| BOTANICAL ELECTRONIC NEWS |
|---|
| ISSN 1188-603X |
| No. 544 December 12, 2019 | aceska@telus.net | Victoria, B.C. |
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Stan passed away peacefully in his 102nd year having recently celebrated 61 years of marriage to his beloved wife, Lyndell. He was surrounded at his passing by Lyndell and their children Glenys (Chuck) and David (Trinity). Stan was predeceased by son, Robert, in 2011. He took great joy in his grandchildren Zoe, Evelyn, Theo, and Rhian. We feel blessed that he was here to watch them grow.
Born in Llanelli in south Wales, Stan was one of four children, all of whom lived well into their nineties. A graduate of the University of Aberystwyth in Wales in 1941, Stan began his career at the Commonwealth Mycological Institute at Kew Gardens in England. In 1952 he was invited to Ottawa to join Agriculture Canada as a research scientist. It was in Ottawa that he met Lyndell. During their courtship, Stan would drive his MG convertible to Hamilton, Ontario where Lyndell had taken up a teaching post. Eventually he would purchase cars more suited to Canadian weather, but his imported sports car with the red leather interior did the trick and Stanley Hughes and Lyndell Rutherford were married in 1958.
Stan worked with Agriculture Canada until his retirement in 1983. During his career, he achieved international recognition. In 1969 he was awarded the Jakob Eriksson Gold Medal from the Swedish Academy of Science. In 1975 Stan was President of the Mycological Society of America, and from 1971-83, Vice-President of the International Mycological Association. In 1981 he was awarded the George Lawson Medal from the Canadian Botanical Association. He was immensely proud of being named as a Foreign Member of the Linnean Society. Stan left behind a seminal body of work in mycology, and the respect of his peers culminated in his being appointed to the Order of Canada in 2010. Stan carried his passionate interest in his field into his nineties. It pleased him greatly that his collection of mycological books, some quite rare, was accepted gratefully by the Botanical Gardens in his native Wales.
Stan found meaning in the beauty and order of Nature. He was a passionate collector and classifier, and an environmentalist before it became a necessity. He enriched family conversations by recalling salient Welsh proverbs and the poetry of Wordsworth and Longfellow. The world fascinated Stan, and we will miss his searching mind. His quick wit was second to none. He was a consummate gentleman, kind father, and a loving husband.
Nos da, Cariad. See also: https://youtu.be/2tIsXzZ9ooc
ABSTRACT
The Lomatium grayi complex is morphologically diverse across it range. The type species of this complex, Lomatium grayi s.s., has been found to not be a host of the larvae of Papilio indra, while the other three morphotypes are larval-hosts. A fifteen character, morphometric analysis was conducted on 390 herbarium specimens from throughout the range of this species. PCA, MANOVA, CDA, and Tukey tests revealed that the majority of the characters in this dataset were significantly different between four regional morphotypes. As a result of the morphometric analysis, the morphotypes are herein proposed as four species. Two new species are proposed for populations of Lomatium grayi in the Pacific Northwest. Lomatium papilioniferum J.A.Alexander & Whaley is proposed for plants in California, western Idaho, northern Nevada, Oregon, and Washington. Lomatium klickitatense J.A.Alexander & Whaley is proposed for populations of robust plants from western Klickitat County, Washington, and northern Hood River County, Oregon. Lomatium grayi var. depauperatum is elevated to a species. This leaves no infraspecific taxa within L. grayi s.s. A presence/absence phenetic analysis of combined essential oil data was inconclusive regarding the composition of L. grayi s.s., which was found to be more similar to Lomatium klickitatense and Lomatium depauperatum (M.E.Jones) J.A.Alexander & Whaley than other species of Lomatium. Taxonomic treatments for each of the four species in this complex are provided. A key to these species and the multiple species that have been commonly mistaken for Lomatium grayi is also included.
1. Peduncle and stems stout and inflated; petals purple or reddish purple, anthers purple _________________________________ L. minus
1. Peduncle and stems slender or stout, but not inflated; petals white, ochroleucous, or yellow (petals purple in L. tuberosum), anthers also ochroleucous, yellow, or purple.
2. Petals purple (rare yellow forms were reported by Mastroguiseppe et al. 1985), bladeless basal sheaths present, up to 4.5 cm long and 2 cm wide ____________________________ L. tuberosum
2. Petals white, ochroleucous, or yellow, bladeless basal sheaths absent (or sometimes only appearing bladeless due to the fragmentation of the early-season, depauperate leaflet).
3. Ultimate pinnule lobes congested, obscuring the short intercostal areas along the rachillae, apical 2-3 pinnule pairs of the secondary leaflets without a naked intercostal region between the rachilla and the basal-most pinnule lobes, appearing sessile.
4. Plants caulescent _______ L. brunsfeldianum 4. Plants acaulescent.
5. Sheathing basal leaflets divided into 4-6 primary rachises, the largest 2 lateral primaries similar in size and shape to the central primary, the additional, 1-3 smaller, lateral primaries identical to secondaries in length and shape, restricted to Washington ____________________ L. quintuplex
5. Sheathing basal leaflets divided into 3 primary rachises, the 2 lateral primaries similar in size and shape to the central primary, small lateral primaries absent. Long-disjunct from the range of the prior species; widespread in SE Idaho, E Utah, SW Wyoming, W Colorado, and NW New Mexico L. grayi
3. Ultimate pinnule lobes diffuse, not obscuring the elongate intercostal areas along the rachillae; apical 2-3 pinnule pairs of the secondary leaflets with a naked intercostal region between the rachilla and the basal-most pinnule lobes, the leaflets appearing short-stalked or petiolulate.
6. Basal leaf sheaths short and narrow, papery or leathery, the scarious margin obscure or absent, the thatch at the apex of the caudex composed primarily of numerous, weathered, gray stalks formed from the previous year's long-persistent peduncles, the sheaths from previous years absent or weathering into a few loose fibers.
7. Calyx teeth present, 0.5-1 mm long, narrowly deltoid in shape; fruit winged laterally and dorsally, the dorsal wings obscuring developing even in immature stages ___ Cymopterus terebinthinus
7. Calyx teeth absent or nearly obsolete, less than 0.2 mm long, broadly deltoid in shape, when present; fruit winged laterally only, the dorsal surface ribbed ________________ L. depauperatum
6. Basal leaf sheaths long and broad, papery, the scarious margin broad and conspicuous, the sheaths from previous years weathering into a dense thatch of fibers and chaffy or chartaceous scales at the apex of the caudex, the previous year's peduncles present in the thatch as a few, grey stalks; peduncles stout, 7-60 cm long.
8. Peduncles 6-8 mm wide (1 cm below the apex); ultimate apical and lateral pinnules of the secondary and tertiary leaflets with a naked intercostal region (4.5)5-8 mm long (the naked intercostal region is located between the rachilla and the basal-most pinnule lobes, and appears like a petiolule), ultimate apical lobes in cross-section subterete, (6.5)7-15 mm long ________ L. klickitatense
8. Peduncles 2-6 mm wide (1 cm below the apex); ultimate apical and lateral pinnules of the secondary and tertiary leaflets with a naked intercostal region 1-5(6) mm long (appears like a short petiolule), ultimate apical lobes in X-section flat or subterete, 1-7 (9) mm long ___________ L. papilioniferum
For those of us who have taught grass identification, it's been a tough 30 years. We've had to develop our own teaching materials, create our own field identification guides for the regions in which we've worked, scrounged for informative illustrations, and so forth. Recently, however, we've been blessed by the appearance of published field guides to grasses authored by professional botanists and lifelong grass enthusiasts. Even so, don't be too hasty in discarding your old Flora of the Pacific Northwest (Hitchcock and Cronquist (1973), as I explain below.
Notable among these recent publications is Grasses of California by James P. Smith, Jr. (2014); Grasses of the Northeast by Dennis W. Magee (2014), and Field guide to grasses of Oregon and Washington by Cindy Roché et al. (2019). Despite their emphasis on grass identification, each is uniquely different.
Smith, Jr, James P. 2014. Grasses of California. University of California Press, Oakland. 448 p. ISBN: 978-0-52027-568-3 [paperback] ; ISBN: 9780520958432 [e-book] https://www.ucpress.edu/ebook/9780520958432/field-guide-to-grasses-of-california
Smith's effort is written in a light, easy-to-read, and sometimes humorous style. He provides keys of his own creation and informative color photographs often showing the subject in a field setting. Descriptions of genera are arranged alphabetically. His description of where grasses occur and species lists for those ecosystems are particularly useful. Unfortunately, species distribution maps are omitted.
Magee, Dennis W. 2014. Grasses of the Northeast. University of Massachusetts Press, Amherst. 256 p. ISBN: 978-1-62534-098-6 [jacketed hardcover with companion DVD-ROM] https://www.umass.edu/umpress/title/grasses-northeast
Magee's field guide to the grasses of New England and adjacent New York includes keys prepared specifically for this publication and is rich in illustrative line drawings often taken, interestingly, from 1913 and 1950 publications. His descriptions are arranged by a former and more traditional view of grass tribes, which makes the guide challenging to use for those of us who don't find tribes all that useful for identification. Magee uses county-occurrence dot maps to illustrate species distributions. The book comes with a DVD with a random-access key based on software created by the Northwest's own Richard Old of XID Services. The DVD is also full of photographs (many by Richard Old), additional line drawings, and photographs of herbarium sheets that are not all that illustrative.
Roché, Cindy, R. Brainerd, B.L. Wilson, N. Otting, and R.C. Korfhage. 2019. Field guide to grasses of Oregon and Washington. Oregon State University Press, Corvallis. 488 p. ISBN 978-0-87071-959-2. Paperback http://osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/field-guide-to-grasses-of-oregon-and-washington
The effort by Roché et al. is remarkable primarily for the superb color macro-photographs created specifically for this publication. As students of grasses know, the "devil's in the details," so the interpreted photographs are especially helpful. The keys included are essentially the same as provided in the Flora of Oregon Volume 1 (Meyers et al., 2015) and recently revised (2nd edition) of Flora of the Pacific Northwest (Hitchcock et al. 2018). Descriptions of genera are arranged alphabetically. The guide uses dot maps based on herbarium specimens. Unfortunately, these species distribution maps tend to inaccurately depict known distributions of grasses, particularly in Washington. For example, based on my own personal observations, Washington distributions of Briza minor, Bromus inermis, Molinia caerulea, Sclerochloa dura, and Ventenata dubia are notably inaccurate, to name a few. This deficiency can importantly skew a reader's impression of distribution. Perhaps county-occurrence dot maps would have been a better choice to capture the "has been reported from" occurrences not documented by existing herbarium specimens. Also, this reader had hoped for at least brief descriptions of the ecosystems in which these grasses occur.
Unfortunately, and no matter how well written they are, field guides to specific plant taxa often feel one-dimensional. While grass identification is certainly important, only the most intensely focused students of grasses will find these field guides able to hold interest for long. Indeed, the most fascinating and practical information is to be found in the biology, evolution, and natural history of grasses. All three field guides will sometimes briefly touch on interesting aspects of these topics (Smith more than the others), but much is left unsaid. That's too bad because there are dramatic and important stories to be told. Why do grasses have predilection to be invasive-and not just invasive, but among the world's most important noxious weeds? What about the endophytic fungi that live, remarkably, within the bodies of grasses? Are grasses evolving rapidly before our very eyes-as suggested by recent research?
Even the emerging systematics of grasses is captivating-who would have contemplated the current 'raging' controversy involving Spartina and Sporobolus (see: https://ncseagrant.ncsu.edu/currents/2019/01/whats-in-a-name-a-lot-it-seems/). Which leads me to mention one other challenge in creating and using field guides to specific plant taxa, as Magee articulately describes (p. xxiii). Plant classification (and the subsequent naming of plant taxa) is increasingly based on molecular data derived from DNA research. While this is critical evidence for understanding evolutionary relationships among plants, newer plant classifications are tending to drift away from morphological and anatomical differences and similarities that are clearly visible. The potential result is, as he puts it, "abandonment of time-honored perspectives and diagnostic criteria that could ultimately lead to a classification system that is impractical and confusing to the field botanist."
For this reason, both Magee and Smith conserve some of the older classification and naming perspectives better suited to plant identification in the field than are some of the newer ones-even as those old perspectives are no longer considered phylogenetically accurate. That's the joy of the 1st edition Flora of the Pacific Northwest. While its keys are sometimes challenging to use and it no longer reflects the current diversity of grasses in our flora, its "30,000-foot view"-the genus level view-is well -designed for rapid field identification of grasses. For that reason, for my personal use and in my own teaching, I shall not quite yet abandon Hitchcock and Cronquist (1973).
Still, what a great time to be a student of grasses! On the internet and now in published field guides, resources and tools available for the identification and study of grasses have never been more easily available and so richly diverse.
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