This is a fascinating book, composed of excerpts from the works of historians, botanists, travellers, filled with amazement at the strange effects of plant substances on men and women who consume them, in one way or another. (We are still amazed, of course, by the same subject and perhaps even more by the smallness of the gap between primitive man and the so-called “civilized” man of today.)
From a different standpoint, Garrett Hardin, one of the country’s most erudite and prolific writers, as well as a geneticist and evolutionist, has again written an eminently readable but serious study of “Spaceship Earth.”
This is a most remarkable book. Presumably it is designed as a practical book on plant care, particularly in such settings as an apartment in a large city, and treats of such mundane subjects as soil, fertilizers, humidity, lighting, propagation and pests. But to properly care for plants, the author says, it is necessary to really live with them, as with people, to understand them, to talk to them, to touch them, to make friends with them. Plants are conceived as having a metaphysical as well as an ecological nature, and a new kind of consciousness—plant consciousness—is involved.
This text brings together much of present day understanding and many methods in the field of vegetational analysis and description. Shimwell begins with practical aspects, such as quadrats and transects, proceeds through the history of vegetation classification, then goes into the bases for description (i.e., life forms, structure in space, time, etc.).
Keys, distribution maps, habitats, references, nomenclature, and notes are given for the Onagraceae occurring naturally or naturalized in Mississippi. Genera included are: Gaura, Oenothera, Ludwigia, and Circaea.
Parmelia (Xanthoparmelia) monticola, a new species from western North Carolina, produces usnic acid, fumarprotocetraric acid, physodalic acid, traces of stictic acid, and, as an accessory substance, traces of an unidentified substance (possibly sublimbatic acid). Another new species, Parmelia (Hypotrachyna) oostingii, is common and widespread in the spruce-fir forests of the Southern Appalachians and is also known from a single collection from southern Chile. Parmelia oostingii produces atranorin, gyrophoric acid, an unknown substance, and 2 to 4 trace unidentified substances. Parmelia densirhizinata Kur., P. thysanota Kur., and P. gonylophora Hale, three sorediate species of section Hypotrachyna closely related to P. oostingii, are characterized morphologically and chemically. Microphyllinic acid is reported for the first time in the Parmeliae as a constant component of P. thysanota. Parmelia nakanishii Hale, recently described from the Southern Appalachians, is identical to P. thysanota, a species previously known only from Mexico. The Southern Appalachian distributions for these previously rarely collected species are reported.
Collections are reported from the herbarium of The University of North Carolina at Charlotte of 573 distributional records for the Carolinas representing 478 taxa of 98 families.
Four taxa of Helenium (Compositae) are recognized in Tennessee. Helenium brevifolium is reported as new to Tennessee, and plants of H. autumnale are recognized as belonging to var. parviflorum.
The flowering responses of 50 species of winter annuals grown in heated and nonheated rooms of a greenhouse in Lexington, Kentucky were compared. None of the 50 species, except possibly Galium cruciata and Thlaspi perfoliata, has an absolute low temperature requirement for flowering, but in 40 of the species temperature exerts a quantitative influence, by increasing or decreasing the time to flowering. In 38 species, low temperature slowed growth and development and thus delayed the time to flowering, while in two species, Alyssum alyssoides and Bromus japonicus, low temperature decreased the time to flowering. In the other eight species temperature did not influence flowering either in a quantitative or qualitative way, and plants in the heated and nonheated rooms flowered at the same time. In these eight species photoperiod may be more important than temperature in controlling the time of flowering in the field.
The bryologically ordinary area bounded partly by the impounded Cumberland and Tennessee Rivers in Lyon and Trigg Counties, Kentucky, and Stewart County, Tennessee, and administered by the Tennessee Valley Authority as an outdoor recreation and conservation education area, was explored on 24 days of collecting. Ninety-five species of mosses and 20 species of hepatics were found. Relative abundance, substratum, and landscape type are tabulated for all species. Species associations, the distribution of species in relation to free water sources, and local richness of species are also presented. All species are annotated. A comparison of the species richness of the 170,000-acre area with that in comparable areas reveals a fair and partially distinctive showing of bryophytes in Land Between the Lakes in spite of the adverse factor of moisture shortage at and above ground level.