Herbarium

With the emergence of a new field, biodiversity informatics, an important task has been to evaluate completeness of biodiversity information that is existing and available for various countries and regions. This paper offers a first and very basic assessment of sampling gaps and inventory completeness across the Cameroon Mountains. Because digital accessible knowledge is severely limited for the region, we relied on qualitative evaluations of inventory completeness, supplemented by large amounts of data from the National Herbarium of Cameroon (YA) database. Detailed botanical inventories have been developed for Mt Cameroon, the Kupe-Mwanenguba Mountains, Mt Oku, and the Mambila Plateau, leaving substantial geographic and environmental coverage gaps corresponding to Rumpi Hills, Mt Nlonako, Kimbi Fungom National Park, Bali and Bafut Ngemba, Mt Bamboutos, Kagwene, and Tchabal Mbabo. This paper provides a roadmap for a comprehensive botanical survey for this region. Completing this sur...

Muchas de las prácticas artísticas contemporáneas preocupadas por la emergencia ambiental se orientan a poner en primer plano la agencia de entidades no humanas como contrapeso imaginario de los procesos de destrucción de los ecosistemas originados en la acción humana. Mi objetivo en este trabajo es indagar el modo en que el sensorium vegetal se elabora en el marco de algunas prácticas artísticas que, preocupadas por la crisis ecológica, apuntan a darle volumen a la idea de “fin del mundo” (tal como creemos conocerlo) y cómo ello puede ser analizado desde el punto de vista de la estética de la explicitud elaborada por Silvia Schwarzböck. Para ello, me centraré en algunas prácticas artísticas que construyen un sensorium vegetal que nos devuelve una imagen particular del mundo. En primer lugar, analizaremos el Herbario de Chernóbil (2016), una obra de Tondeur y Marder que conjuga fotogramas y ensayística de las plantas radioactivas resultantes del desastre nuclear ocurrido en la ciudad ucraniana. En segundo lugar, la obra de Joaquín Fargas, Sunflower, centinela del cambio climático (2007), una obra de ingeniería robótica que semeja la dinámica de la flor para operar como estación meteorológica en la ciudad más austral de Argentina, Ushuaia


Many contemporary artistic practices concerned with the environment emergency try to give visibility to the agency of non-human entities as an imaginary counterbalance to the processes involving the destruction  of ecossystems by human action. My goal in this paper is to investigate how vegetable sensorium is elaborated in some artistic practices concerned with the ecology crisis which discuss the idea of the "end of the word" (as far as we are suppose to know it) on the basis of Silvia Schwarzböck's aesthetics of expliciting. I will analyze two artistic practices which construct a vegetal sensorium that gives us a particular view of the world. Firstly, I analyze Herbarium Chernobyl (2016), a work by Tondeur and Marder combining photograms and essays about the radioactive plants that resulted from the nuclear disaster at the Ucranian city. Secondly, I present Sunflower, Sentinel of Climatic Change (2007), a work of robotic engineering that emulates the flower to operate as a weather station in Ushuaia, Argentina.

The transfer of all species of Dryandra into Banksia in 2007, resulting from phylogenetic studies demonstrating that the latter is paraphyletic with respect to the former, generated controversy in some sections of the community. In a recent paper, Alex George, a taxonomist of long standing and monographer of both genera, criticised the transfer, and its subsequent acceptance by the Australian herbarium and plant systematics community. More broadly, George criticised the direction of modern taxonomy, particularly its basis in phylogenetic analysis and monophyly. His criticisms reflect adherence to a largely pre-Darwinian taxonomic tradition, methodology, practice and conceptual framework. This framework, developed in the late 18th and early 19th centuries, and later operationalised as the phenetic method, has for most taxonomists been superseded by the phylogenetic framework for taxonomy developed by and following Willi Hennig. The criticism of the Dryandra transfer by George and col...

In this paper, based on fieldwork and herbaria surveys, new data concerning the presence of 32 native and alien vascular species for Sicily (Italy) are provided. Among the native species, the occurrence of the following taxa is reported for the first time or confirmed after many decades of non-observation: Aira multiculmis, Arum maculatum, Carex flacca subsp. flacca, Mentha longifolia, Oxybasis chenopodioides, Najas minor and Xiphion junceum. Furthermore, we document the presence of three native species (Cornus mas, Juncus foliosus and Limonium avei) that, despite being repeatedly observed in Sicily and reported in the literature, are inexplicably omitted by the most recent authoritative checklists regarding the flora of Italy. Finally, fifteen alien species new to Sicily (including one new to Europe, i.e., Pyrus betulifolia) are reported and seven poorly documented allochthonous taxa are confirmed for the island, and for two of them, a status change is proposed. These new or confir...

The species Stellaria umbellata is reported as a new record for the western Himalayan flora.  Critical examination of the species in nature, Indian herbaria, online herbaria and protologue confirmed its identity as Stellaria umbellata.  Earlier, it was erroneously identified in the western Himalaya as Stellaria subumbellata or Holosteum umbellatum.  This species was previously not reported from the western, central or eastern Himalaya and thus, it is also a new record for the flora of the Himalaya.  

Purpose: The first purpose of this study to record the new and rare use of medicinal plants in the selected area; secondly to discover the plants which were unexplored in the past and thirdly to record the Ethnobotanical data of occurring plant species.Methodology: The studied area surveyed from July to December. The plants were dried and mounted on standard herbarium sheets. The Ethnobotanical data were collected from 85 local people of Haroonabad by questionnaire.Findings: The wild flora contained 81 species within 28 families. The largest family was Poaceae with 15 species followed by Euphorbiaceae with 8 species while Asteraceae and Amaranthaceae with 7 species. The life span of plants was comprised of 47 annual species (58%) and 34 perennial species (42%). The life-form spectrum explains that Therophyte 48 species (59%) were the dominant followed by Phanerophytes 7 species (8%) and Chaemophytes 13 species (17%), Hemicryptophyte 8 species (10%), Geophytes 3 species (4%) Halophyt...

The purpose of this study was to use a historical series of exsiccates as a documentary source, aiming to retrieving information on species of Urticaceae Juss. The study approached the collections of exsiccates belonging to herbaria of the Royal Botanic Gardens (K), Kew, England; Muséum National d’Histoire Naturelle (P), Paris, France; and New York Botanical Garden (NY), New York, USA, also printed sources and manuscripts. We analyzed more than 2800 exsiccates, comprising the period between 1783 and 2003. From the information labels of the exsiccates, it was possible to obtain the use and common name of the Urticaceae species. A total of thirteen species with register of use were find in the labels, six genera of Urticaceae: five species of Pourouma Aubl., three of Cecropia Loefl., two of Urera Gaudich., one of Boehmeria Jacq., one of Coussapoa Aubl., one of Laportea Gaudich. Five categories of usage were identify: (1) animal feeding; (2) human feeding; (3) medicinal; (4) fiber and ...

Sloetia is reported as a new generic record for the Philippines. Individuals of Sloetia elongata were discovered near the Mt. Hamiguitan Range Wildlife Sanctuary, growing in lowland disturbed areas outside the protected area. A subsequent search of online images and herbarium specimens revealed two previously overlooked records of S. elongata from Dinagat, indicating that the species occurs at both the northern and southern extremes of eastern Mindanao. Sloetia can be distinguished from other Moraceae by its spicate staminate to bisexual inflorescences with a prominent sterile groove and its free stipules that are nearly fully amplexicaul.

Bromus diandrus Roth has been recorded for the first time in Jammu & Kashmir, India,
where its distribution was previously known only in Himachal Pradesh and Tamil Nadu. This new finding
raises the number of Bromus L. taxa in Jammu and Kashmir to seventeen. A detailed description, habitat,
and illustrations of B. diandrus are provided, along with a geo-coordinate map showing the collection site.

Cannonball mushroom is known as the unique genera in Basidiomycetes. This micro-mushroom is the first recorded in Indonesia. The specimen was deposited into Herbarium Bogoriense with code BO 24422. The Sphaerobolus was found on the rotten wood in Landscape Arboretum of IPB University. The fruiting body has similar morphology between Geastrum and Pilobolus. The mushroom has an exoperidium (like Geastrum outer) and endoperidium (like Pilobolus head). The basidiospore is hyaline, globose to elongate, and having circular gradation on the surface. Sphaerobolus is known as lignicolous, phototrophic, and sometimes as coprophilous fungus. Sphaerobolus was classified into Geastrales and Sphaerobolaceae. BO 24422 specimen is classified as S. stellatus.

Os espacos de educacao podem ser relacionados como espacos formais e nao formais, os quais possibilitam diferentes formas de se promover atividades educacionais. O presente estudo trata-se de um ensaio teorico que tem como objetivo apresentar um levantamento das diferentes atividades de herbarios de diferentes regioes do Brasil identificando suas acoes enquanto espacos formais e nao formais de educacao. A partir das analises realizadas, foi possivel identificar que herbarios podem apresentar-se de maneira fluida, podendo ser considerados espacos formais e nao formais de acordo com suas atividades executadas, permitindo acesso ao conhecimento cientifico tanto a um publico academico quanto leigo. Os herbarios podem contribuir para diminuir o abismo entre a Universidade enquanto espaco formal e a sociedade, passando a ressignificar espacos e atuar tambem como espacos nao formais de ensino, aliados na democratizacao do acesso aos conhecimentos sobre botânica para garantir a conservacao ...

Pteris griffithii Hook., one of the rarest fern species on the Indian subcontinent, is reported from Bhutan for the first time. The identity of this species was confirmed through morphological determination at the National Herbarium (THIM) of the National Biodiversity Centre (NBC) of Bhutan. It was found only in one location, in Gyelpozhing in eastern Bhutan, at an elevation of 521 m a.s.l. on 10 January 2016. Given that a very limited study of this species was conducted, the knowledge baseline with regard to its distribution is poor. It is also reported that this species has not been found for several years. The species is also considered to be very rare or critically endangered in some countries; however, there are no assessments on the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) Red List for this particular species. This paper attempts to provide baseline information considering its rarity and data deficiency. This species is also reported from the adjacent neighboring ...

The Checklist of the Vascular Plants of the Republic of Guinea (CVPRG) is a specimen-based, expert-validated knowledge product, which provides a concise synthesis and overview of current knowledge on 3901 vascular plant species documented from Guinea (Conakry), West Africa, including their accepted names and synonyms, as well as their distribution and status within Guinea (indigenous or introduced, endemic or not). The CVPRG is generated automatically from the Guinea Collections Database and the Guinea Names Backbone Database, both developed and maintained at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, in collaboration with the staff of the National Herbarium of Guinea. A total of 3505 indigenous vascular plant species are reported of which 3328 are flowering plants (angiosperms); this represents a 26% increase in known indigenous angiosperms since the last floristic overview. Intended as a reference for scientists documenting the diversity and distribution of the Guinea flora, the CVPRG will a...

The itinerary of the German botanist and explorer Ernst Heinrich Georg Ule (1854–1915) in central Bahia state, Brazil, is reconstructed from published records, specimen label data and unpublished correspondence. Emphasis is given to his collecting localities in November 1906 in the campo rupestre of the Serra do Sincorá, Chapada Diamantina, where he collected type specimens of species from many genera and families. The available information suggests that his collections were made over a wide area along the western side of the Serra, from Camulengo in the south to near Mucugê in the north. Among them is one of the syntypes of Anthurium petrophilum (Araceae), recently re-discovered at the Herbarium Hamburgense (HBG). Ule also collected the other syntype in September 1906 at Maracás, a distinct inselberg highland to the east. Since recent morphological and molecular studies have shown populations from the two areas to be taxonomically distinct, the duplicate at the Berlin Botanical Mus...

Background and aims – The Zingiberaceae of Rwanda are revised, and three new records of Aframomum species (A. corrorima, A. daniellii, A. zambesiacum) are provided. One previously recorded species, A. alboviolaceum, has to be excluded from the Flora of Rwanda. Two new species of Renealmia are described from Rwanda and Burundi in connection with the preparation of the family treatment for the Flore d’Afrique centrale. Material and methods – Field work and standard herbarium practices were applied. Key results – Renealmia timmiorum sp. nov. is similar to R. cincinnata and R. cabrae, and R. susannae-katziae sp. nov. is similar to R. africana and R. dewevrei. The differences with these species are discussed and distribution maps for the new taxa are presented. Renealmia timmiorum is assessed as Least Concern (LC), while R. susannae-katziae is assessed as Endangered (EN).

The taxonomic knowledge for genus Justicia in the Amazonian state of Pará, Brazil, is updated. The study was based on material from important national and international herbaria, as well as specimens collected in different vegetation types within the state, some of them kept under cultivation by the first author. Twenty five species of Justicia were recorded for Pará: J. asclepiadea, J. birae, J. calycina, J. carajensis, J. cayennensis, J. comata, J. distichophylla, J. divergens, J. gendarussa, J. laevilinguis, J. mcdadeana, J. montealegrensis, J. multiglandulosa, J. oldemanii, J. oriximinensis, J. paraensis, J. pectoralis, J. polystachya, J. potamogeton, J. pseudoamazonica, J. riedeliana, J. secunda, J. sphaerosperma, J. sprucei, J. yurimaguensis. Among these, five are new records for the state of Pará (J. asclepiadea, J. cayennensis, J. gendarussa, J. oldemanii, and J. yurimaguensis). Moreover, seven of the accepted names are lectotypified and a new name (J. oriximinensis) is prop...

Identifying areas susceptible to invasion by an alien species is a strategy of prevention. We used national herbaria and global databases to assess the invasion trends of the two aquatic invasive species Ludwigia hexapetala and Ludwigia peploidessubsp. montevidensis in Italy. We defined the invasion status with invasions curves and predicted potentially suitable areas with Species Distribution Models based on WorldClim variables and the human footprint index. Low seasonal variation in temperature and precipitation, temperature ≥ 20 °C in the warmest, driest and wettest periods of the year and precipitation in the coldest period are the bioclimatic factors that most account for the potential distribution of the two species. The human footprint has lower relative importance than bioclimatic variables. All Italian peninsula appears as a suitable bioclimatic environment for the invasion of the two Ludwigia species, except the Alps and the highest peaks in the Apennine. Based on the curr...

Purpose: The first purpose of this study to record the new and rare use of medicinal plants in the selected area; secondly to discover the plants which were unexplored in the past and thirdly to record the Ethnobotanical data of occurring plant species.Methodology: The studied area surveyed from July to December. The plants were dried and mounted on standard herbarium sheets. The Ethnobotanical data were collected from 85 local people of Haroonabad by questionnaire.Findings: The wild flora contained 81 species within 28 families. The largest family was Poaceae with 15 species followed by Euphorbiaceae with 8 species while Asteraceae and Amaranthaceae with 7 species. The life span of plants was comprised of 47 annual species (58%) and 34 perennial species (42%). The life-form spectrum explains that Therophyte 48 species (59%) were the dominant followed by Phanerophytes 7 species (8%) and Chaemophytes 13 species (17%), Hemicryptophyte 8 species (10%), Geophytes 3 species (4%) Halophyt...