Volume 64 – Issue 3 (Sep 1999)

The vegetation and flora of 16 dolomite and limestone barren sites in Lee and Russell Counties, Virginia are described. Two-hundred and ninety-eight native and 26 exotic taxa were recorded from the Virginia barrens. Families with the highest number of taxa are the Asteraceae (54 taxa, 16.7%), Poaceae (43 taxa, 13.3%), Fabaceae (19 taxa, 5.9%), and Cyperaceae (17 taxa, 5.6%). Five taxa, Aster pratensis, Carex crawei, Hedyotis nigricans, Rhamnus lanceolata ssp. glabrata, and Spiranthes magnicamporum are reported as new to Virginia, along with 14 others considered rare in the Commonwealth. When floristic similarity is calculated between study sites, barren sites within each county are more similar than Lee and Russell County sites are to each other. Virginia barrens are also compared floristically with other barrens in the Ridge and Valley Physiographic Province. Ecological maintenance of barren communities is attributed to drought stress in possible combination with other factors, including fire. Use of the term barren, glade, and prairie to name this vegetation is discussed.

The 9th annual Richard and Minnie Windler Award has been presented to Dr. Mark P. Widrlechner for his paper entitled “The genus Rubus L. in Iowa,” which appeared in Castanea 63(4):415-465. The Richard and Minnie Windler Award is designated as a meritorious SABS award for the best systematics paper published the preceding year in Castanea. Dr. Donald R. Windler of Towson State University established this award as a memorial to his parents.

Dr. Dan K. Evans has been named as the eleventh recipient of the Southern Appalachian Botanical Society’s Elizabeth Ann Bartholomew Award. The award was presented to Dr. Evans during the Society’s annual breakfast meeting at the Association of Southeastern Biologists meeting in Wilmington, North Carolina, on April 16, 1999. Dr. Evans was nominated for the award by one of his former graduate students, Dale Suiter, and his nomination was supported by a number of his former students and colleagues.

A monograph which includes revisions, at generic and specific levels, of New World genera of tribe Ingeae (Mimosaceae) is presented in three volumes. This scholarly tome includes useful keys, descriptions of taxa, and phylogenetic analyses.

Julian Steyermark’s Flora of Missouri has been a standard reference for the plants of Missouri and the greater mid-western United States since its first publication in 1963. It has been generally accepted as one of the best North American floras since that time. Dr. George Yatskievych and his colleagues have undertaken a revision upon that original work and their progress has been eagerly followed by many. Great anticipation preceded the publication of this magnificent volume that made its appearance rather quietly earlier this year. The result is a masterpiece!

Noteworthy Collections: Maryland, Illinois, and Arkansas

Dominance on the Rock Creek Park floodplain has changed from Acer negundo (boxelder), a floodplain species, to Liriodendron tulipifera (tuliptree), a nonfloodplain species. Anthropogenic alterations appear to have caused drying of the floodplain to bring this dominance change about.

Caloglossa leprieurii (Montagne) J. Agardh was first described from a mangrove area in French Guiana. It is now placed in the red algal order Ceramiales, family Delesseriaceae (King and Puttock 1994). It is one of six genera in this family that have been reported from inland waters in North America (Sheath et al. 1993). This is its first freshwater report (north of Puerto Rico) for the United States.

The sub-shrub known as Gopher Apple (Licania michauxii Prance) is a familiar plant of xeric soils of the Southeastern Coastal Plain, from South Carolina across southern Georgia to eastern Louisiana and southward to southern Florida (Godfrey 1988, Jones and Coile 1988, Prance 1989, Radford et al. 1968, Thomas and Allen 1996, Wunderlin 1998). It is consistently found in habitats where fire is a controlling factor, either annually or at intervals of several years. A low woody perennial, it spreads by means of rather stout, subterranean stems from which arise numerous suffrutescent flowering and fruiting branches. Where other vegetation has been cleared, as on graded roadsides, it frequently covers appreciable areas with hundreds of erect stems as the only visible portions of a single underground plant. The fruits, sweet-fleshed ellipsoidal drupes to 3.5 cm in length, are produced sparingly, often no more than one or two per aerial stem.

Andromonoecy is a rare sexual system in which plants produce both bisexual and male flowers. In this paper we present the results of a quantitative study on the relative production of male and bisexual flowers in Prunus caroliniana (Rosaceae). Ten individual trees located in Statesboro, Georgia were sampled to determine the relative production of male and bisexual flowers. Approximately 80% of the 5,000 sampled flowers were male. Male flower production at the whole plant level ranged from 38% to 98%. Thus, some individual plants were reproducing almost exclusively via male function and pollen donation while others presumably had more mixed mating patterns. The patterns of sex expression revealed here suggest that subtle changes in floral morphology associated with andromonoecy may be occuring in many more taxonomic entities than is currently believed.