Mudhand

Arundo donax, not a bamboo but still an impressive grass growing up to 6 meters in height (or sometimes even higher; it is in the same tribe as Phragmites). It is widely naturalized/wwedy in warmer parts of the world, and is common in the Mediterranean and areas with similar climate. It has been cultivated for thousands of years; leaves used by the Ancient Egypts in wrapping their dead and stems by the romans , but also in making pipes (for more than 5000 years), and is the source of the reeds for woodwind instruments (oboe, clarinets etc). So strong is the stam that it can also be used as walking sticks and fishing rods. Fastgrowing and a potential source for biofuels? And perhaps one ingredient in the ritual drink Soma…

(Join NRM-S at Facebook!)

Today we moved more than 300 boxes of gymnosperms up to the attic, giving us more space for the scanning group down in the Regnellian herberium! We don’t have many gymnosperms scanned (yet), but I found this Cupressus torulosa from the Indian part of Himalaya (it is distributed on limestone also in Vietnam and the Sichuan of China). Both Joytirmath but especially Badrinath are important religious cities. It is collected by the Schlagintweit brothers who were among the first Europeans to visit and explore parts of Himalaya and the Tibetan plateau (including the Kunlun mountains).

(Join NRM-S at Facebook!)

It was in collaboration with the German (ex-)gardener Carl Ludwig Philipp Zeyher (1799-1858) that Ecklon did most of his collections. Even if we today attribute many of their collections to both of them, they often traveled without each others company. On this specimen we can see two labels… See More, the left in the hand of Zeyher (thin ink and a quick but easily read handwriting), and the right in the hand of Ecklon (thicker ink and rounder letters). They both wrote in German and using the old Kurrentschrift or Alte Deutsche Schrift. The two labels give two different localities (Zeyher’s give Tigerberg, and Ecklon’s give Groene Berg; Ecklon’s label is further dated to the year 1826, three years prior to their collaborations).

(Join NRM-S at Facebook!)

The year 1795 in Åbenrå in what then was Denmark (but today is Schleswig-Holstein), Christian Frederick Ecklon was born. He studied to apothecary, but changed career to botanist and collector, and became one of the most prolific collectors of South African flora, from 1829 together with C.L.P. Zeyher. Here at S we have many thousands of their specimens (many looking similar to this one), and more than 1500 are types… This one shows Ecklon’s easily recognised handwriting on the label to the right, starting with “C. parviflora” and continuing: “Auf Bergen der 4.e Höhe bei Gideon Jouberts Landgut im Kannaland district Zwellendam und am Zwarteberg bei Caledon, [illegible] Novemb”.

(Join NRM-S at Facebook!)

This is not a type, but an early collection of avenbok (Carpinus betulus) from Skåne, the southernmost province in Sweden. It is annotaded in the hand of Daniel Solander (1733-1782), both on the front (recto) and the back (verso); of course also professor Johan Emanuel Wikström (1789-1856) has annotated the sheet…

(Join NRM-S at Facebook!)

What’s in a name? Members of family Penaeaceae are a distinct and easily recognised part of the unique South African (Cape) fynbos vegetation. Closely related are the two small and also (southern) African families Oliniaceae and Rhynchocalyx, and they are sometimes lumped into family Penaeaceae. Sister to this group is the South American family Alzateaceae, and most closely related to this group is the mostly South East Asian Crypteroniaceae. All these families are quite small (all but Crypteroniaceae and Penaeaceae with only one genus each), and it may make sense to lump all of them together into one family (named Crypteroniaceae according to Mabberley’s Plant Book, or more likely Penaeaceae, see APweb-link above), but then this distinct fynbos element (endemic in its most restricted circumscription) of Penaeaceae is lost… So what is the right thing to do? I don’t know!

By the way, the plant is named after Rolf Dahlgren (1932-1987) who was a swedish-born botanist and professor at the university of Copenhagen. He invented the “dahlgrenograms” and was an early proponent of cladistic methodology. He worked extensively on South African plants, and also on monocots.

(Join NRM-S at Facebook!)

Is there anyone who want to go to Africa and have a close look at these plants? Flacourtiaceae is not only merged with Salicaceae (willows), but have also had many genera splitted off. One of these is genus Gerrardina with two species from south-east Africa. Today it is the sole genus in the newly (2006) described family Gerrardinaceae of still uncertain affinity. Not much is known about these small trees, including many of the morphological features, so here you have the chance to make new and important discoveries!

(Join NRM-S at Facebook!)

Science is an ever evolving pursuit, and family Flacourtiaceae is a good example of this. It was earlier a fairly large tropical and subtropical family, but recent phylogenetic analyses have revealed, i.a., that the temperate family Salicaceae is part of Flacourtiaceae (and these two families should then be united and named Salicaceae), and that many of the species thought to belong to Flacouriaceae are rather members of other families (Celastraceae, Malvaceae, Myrtaceae, Passifloraceae,…), and other parts of the old Flacourtiaceae must be separated from the new Salicaceae/Flacourtiaceae… Oncoba still belong to the old Flacourtiaceae (now Salicaceae), but Caloncoba, the genus this plant was first thought to belong in, is now in family Achariaceae… Nice flower though, with many petals and anthers!

(Join NRM-S at Facebook!)

Hendrik van Rijgersma’s (1835-1877) collections from Saint Martin (Lesser Antilles) are always small beauties, here as often accompanied with a water colour drawing. The plant is a Passiflora pallida (a species sometimes included in P. suberosa), one of about 430 Passion flower species in the tropic and warm America (and a further 20 species in Indomalay and the Pacific Islands).

(Join NRM-S at Facebook!)

Lars Levi Laestadius‘ (1800-1861) fame is as the founder of the conservative Lutheran revival movement named after him. But he was also a skilled botanist, and only 24 years old he collected and described this plant as a new variety (later rised to species of its own) of “Arundo lapponica” from Tåsjöberget in Ångermanland, northern Sweden.

(Join NRM-S at Facebook!)