Herbarium News

University of Reading Herbarium Newsletter Issue No. 45, December 2008.

ISSN 0953-0080

URL: www.herbarium.reading.ac.uk

INTRODUCTION

Welcome to another Christmas Herbarium News. As with every edition we have much to report! During the last year a number of important things have happened, not least the refurbishment of two of our taxonomy laboratories (more details below). We have also changed the name of our building from ‘Plant Science Laboratories’ to ‘The Harborne Building’ to commemorate Jeffrey Harborne, FRS, our late lamented phytochemist. This is in line with University policy to name buildings after people, and the new biomolecular sciences building (behind Chemistry) for our medical and pharmacy researchers will be called the Hopkins Building, after the late Professor Harold Hopkins, sometime Professor in Physics here who developed fibre optics and the endoscope.

The Herbarium has been especially busy having now completed the incorporation of the Herbarium from the University of Southampton, again see below.

HERBARIUM REVIEW AND STRATEGY

Our School of Biological Sciences recently undertook a review of the Herbarium, along with the Cole Museum of Zoology and a number of other issues. Ours was led by Professor Philip John with Professor Martin Bell (Archaeology), Kate Arnold-Foster (Head of the University’s Museums and Special Collections Service and Dr Karen Henderson (Head of Technical Services, Biological Sciences). They were very positive and have recommended that a Herbarium Strategy be drawn up for the next five years, currently in progress. Senate also positively noted the Herbarium’s growing level of engagement with the University and the likely increase in the commercial value of this resource.

SOUTHAMPTON UNIVERSITY HERBARIUM AND THE NEW CABINETS

We have now acquired the remainder of the Herbarium of Southampton University. In 1999 shortly after the arrival of Professor Frank Bisby from Southampton, we obtained their legume holdings (c. 7000 sheets) and their bryophytes. Most of the legumes comprised collections made by Frank and his team in the Mediterranean and SW Asia and belonged especially to the Vicieae. The bryophytes, some 2000 packets, were almost all collected by Mrs Jean Paton, a former member of staff (as Jean Comyns) and nicely complement the collections of the late Dr Eric Watson, Dr Royce Longton’s bryological predecessor and author of the standard texts. The remaining specimens totalled 6998 and contained important local collections from Hampshire, some of which were historical records from the 19th century. These included Hewlett Cottrell Watson himself and other notables of the Botanical Exchange Club. A specimen of Fritillaria meleagris by Dr Blomfield in 1849 records this from our nearby classic locality at Stratfield Saye where it still grows today with help from Natural England. Foreign material from C. G. Pringle has provided valuable specimens from Arizona, California, New Mexico and Mexico, a region we had lacked any material. Mrs Elinor Frances Vallentin’s (1873—1924) Falkland Islands material were studied in duplicate by Professor David Moore for his Vascular Flora of the Falkland Islands and so this source material was also especially welcome. To accommodate the specimens, we collected eight of their cabinets (large single door, Edinburgh type). Most have been cleaned and painted to match those obtained from the Natural History Museum a few years ago.

BRAHMS

Ms Viv Rimmer continues to provide us with valuable assistance by inputting herbarium specimen data into our BRAHMS database. We congratulate her on adding another 2000-odd to give a total of 55,447 specimens whose data will shortly be available for searching over the internet through our website.

JULIE HAWKINS

We send our congratulations to Julie on the birth of her daughter, Melissa, on 3rd June. We hope to see Julie on a regular part-time basis in the School in the New Year.

BERKSHIRE FLORA GROUP

The Berkshire Flora Group are holding a Conifer and Herbarium day at the University on Sunday 25th January 2009. Alice Fenton ([email protected]), one of our recent MSc graduates, is organising this and needs to know if you would like to come as places are limited. The idea is to get to know some conifers better. The day is being led by Dr Michael Keith-Lucas with Messrs Glover, Jury and Rutherford also on hand.

Whiteknights has a substantial collection of conifers, recently added to by some acquisitions following an exchange with Bedgebury National Pinetum, The Harris Garden has also recently obtained a Wollemi Pine (see http://www.reading.ac.uk/about/newsandevents/releases/PR14535.asp) planted by the Friends of the Garden. Dr Alastair Culham now claims we have all current families of conifers represented. Mr Rob Glover has been carrying out a survey and collecting data on the Harris Garden species and will make a Garden trail as part of his final-year Botany undergraduate project.

LINNAEUS’ BUST

Herbarium News 30 reported on our plaster bust of Linnaeus, recently displayed in the foyer with the Linnean Society’s poster to celebrate the tercentenary of his birth last year. Subsequently, he was taken for safety during the foyer renovations to the bench in the Herbarium. He is by the famous Finnish sculptor Wilhelm Magnus Runeberg (1838—1920, son of the even more famous poet, Johan Ludvig Runeberg (1804-77), who wrote the Finnish national anthem) and is signed and dated Helsinki 1907. Professor Ahti in Helsinki reports via Professor Per Magnus Jørgensen that Runeberg was commissioned by Helsinki University to do a number of busts of famous scientists just after 1900 and that it is very likely that Linnaeus is one of these. It is one of six plaster casts from an original bronze in Saint Petersberg (Finland was then part of Russia and Runeberg is known to have made a bust of the Czar as well. Identical plaster casts are also present in Helsinki and Lund. We have always suspected that the bust would therefore have some commercial value and on his recent visit to value the University collections, the antiques expert, Adam Schoon, consultant valuer of Tennants of Leyburn and familiar face on the BBC’s Antiques Roadshow confirmed this. Consultations with the University’s Museum of English Rural Life show that we need to obtain a suitable display case for him so he can be returned to the foyer.

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REFURBISHMENT

During the year two of our research labs have been refurbished, as part of a wider refurbishment of labs, foyer and offices in the Harborne Building. Visitors will now see that the foyer has had a very smart makeover with new tables, chairs and comfortable seating, wireless, etc. This was achieved after an expensive asbestos removal.

Lab 103 has been transformed from its humble, homely, status to a light and airy dual use lab designed by Sue and Alastair. The perimeter of the lab now houses the Macintosh computers along with workstations for current research students and visitors. The centre of the lab has a purpose built microscope bench which houses the digital dissection microscopes purchased with the CETL- AURS grant awarded last year. This bench has been designed for research and teaching use, with data projector facility to project from the microscope onto a screen. The room also houses teaching materials and herbarium cabinets to store specimens during examination.

Lab 106 has undergone a refurbishment, with the perimeter benches being removed and replaced with individual desks. The Macintosh computers have been removed to allow Frank’s team on the Species 2000 Catalogue of Life project to use of the original centre bench. During the refurbishments (which took many months!) Frank’s lab relocated to the Lyle Tower.

Lab 109 remains unreconstructed, but now our ‘wet’ lab space where anatomy and histology are undertaken for the School and other users from around the University, including Jonathan Mitchley’s work using the Bryophyte collection. General microscopes are found here along with moss and pollen work.

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Some of our current MSc students identifying lichens after a class with Dr William Purvis and Dr Pat Wolseley in the refurbished lab. 103 and using one of the new CETL AURS microscopes.

TREE PLANTING IN MEMORY OF COLIN GRAYER

Friends gathered in the Harris Garden recently to plant a Trochodendrom aralioides in his memory. Colin died earlier this year of cancer, having been a member of the Applied Statistics Department. Afterwards, Renée hosted a tea party which was held in our refurbished foyer and attended .

Trochodendron aralioides is the sole species in the family Trochodendraceae and is native to southern Japan, southern Korea and Taiwan. It is sometimes colloquially called The Wheel Tree and is an evergreen tree or large shrub growing to 20 m tall. Trochodendron shares with Tetracentron the feature, very unusual in angiosperms, of lacking vessel elements in its wood. This has long been considered a very primitive character, resulting in the classification of these two genera at the base of the angiosperms. However, the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group has shown it to be early in the Eudicots, not the Magnoliids, suggesting the absence of vessel elements is a secondarily evolved character, not a primitive one.

4 CACTUS WORLD

My latest (December 2008) copy of Cactus World: The Journal of the British Cactus & Succulent Society came with a great surprise. The cover featured a splendid cartoon by Gerhard Marx of Gordon Rowley (or should I say Professor Nodrog Yelwor?) in his front room office (his ‚boudoir‛). This is a special issue with 16 extra pages featuring Gordon to provide some of the brighter side of life and put a smile back on our faces at this time of deepening gloom and recession. Gordon is still hard at work and has even contributed an article to this journal on an Echeveria hybrid, following on from an earlier Taxon paper. Although we do not see Gordon in the Herbarium so much these days (the path through the Wilderness now too muddy), we do take queries and students round to use the Cactusville library facilities on a regular basis. At 87, Gordon’s cactus career now spans 70 glorious years and we send him our best wishes for many more. Incidentally, the back cover of the Cactus World shows a 1990 Desperate Dan (who also lives at ‘Cactusvile’) chasing Cactusman!

FIELD COURSES

Spain – Spring 2008 saw our usual field course to Almería and Granada, our nineteenth to the area. The 2009 one will follow on similar lines and take place from 19th March until 2nd April with Reading part III and MSc students, third-year Kew Diploma students and staff from both Reading and Kew. As usual, the course will start in Las Negras, walking out from the village along the spectacular coast and up the ramblas, coach excursions to Cabo de Gata, the Badlands, gypsum localities and the meso- mediterranean of the Sierra de los Filabres, before undertaking projects locally. The party will transfer to Lanjaron (Granada province), a spa town in Las Alpujarras, famous for its mineral water. This allows us access to the higher Sierra Nevada, where depending on the weather and season, we hope to see Crocus nevadensis flowering by snow patches.

Malham – Summer 2008 saw a rather wet field course at Malham Tarn Field Centre in the Yorkshire Dales. Fortunately, the drying facilities and accommodation were both good, so apart from the climb over a very foggy Ingleborough, a full programme was undertaken. This included the sand dunes at Sandscale Haws and the rapidly developing saltmarsh at Askam-in-Furness, the bryophytes and ferns of Ingleton Glens’ Waterfalls walk, Malham’s raised bog and fen and other local habitats. This year’s part I BSc in botany students, along with other undergraduates will undertake a rerun of the course, but hopefully, with better weather, 3rd to the 10th July 2009. Dr Stephen Jury and Mr Ronald Rutherford will lead this ably looked after for health and safety and chauffeured by Mr Trevor Pitman. The MSc students who opt for the Vegetation Survey and Assessment stream will also attend, together with Dr Jonathan Mitchley.

LINNEAN FESTSCHRIFT MEETINGS

A celebration of the work of John Barnett was organised by Professors David Cutler and Pieter Baas at the Linnean Society, 29th—30th May 2008. This Linnean Society meeting, under the title ‘Wood Matters’ brought distinguished wood anatomists together from around the world to honour our Professor John Barnett, who retired from Reading some time ago to a new home in Derbyshire. A series of papers were given on recent developments in wood science and plant development, such as ultrastructure of the cell wall, cambium, reaction wood. John Barnett himself presented the prestigious Academy Lecture of the International Association of Wood Scientists. The first day ended with a splendid dinner at Galileo’s Italian restaurant in the Haymarket at which Rhoda appeared with rather a lot of shopping bags.

A Festschrift for Professor Chris Humphries was held in the Linnean Society’s rooms, 1st to the 3rd October 2008 under the title of ‘Beyond Cladistics’. The meeting addressed issues relating to its past, present and future, and was attended by a very large number of people. It was good to meet up again with many old friends, including: Dave Bramwell, Dennis Stevenson, Ole Seberg, Lynne Parenti, Vicki Funk, Quentin Wheeler, Stephen Blackmore....

5 ORDER OUT OF CHAOS

We would like to congratulate Dr Charlie Jarvis on the publication of his most valuable tome, Order out of Chaos, a treasury of all the important information on Linnean plant names and types in one place. Dr Stephen Jury was fortunate in being present at the presentation to Charlie of the International Association for Plant Taxonomy (IAPT) triennially-awarded Stafleu Medal at the Linnean Society, last March. Some of you will remember Charlie here as both an undergraduate and then as a PhD student working on the genus Tolpis, rather a long time ago though!

BOTANICAL JOURNAL OF THE LINNEAN SOCIETY & HASSAN

Dr Mike Fay at Kew has taken over as Editor of the Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, now published by Wiley, and so Hassan Rankou has left Reading to continue in this work at Kew, employed by the Linnean Society.

MSc COURSE

We congratulate the new MSc graduates (graduation day was December 12th): Helen Chadburn*, Claudia Ciotir*, Victoria Clifford*, Alice Fenton, Kalman Konyves*, Lesley Mason*, Albert Sallu, Georgina Southam*, Rosa Souza-Richards*, Rachael Tierney and Vera Ventura. Asterisks indicate with distinction. We wish them all well in their careers. We are going to especially miss Claudia as she has been running our afternoon tea bar! Kalman was sponsored by the Royal Horticultural Society’s bursary and undertook a project on the taxonomy of Crocus cultivars using molecular markers and hopes to go on to research on Narcissus taxonomy at Reading – a grant application is in active preparation.

A Reading Horticulture graduate, Steven Heaton, has been awarded this year’s RHS Bursary and will be working on Ludwigia species which are presently being sold in garden centres and are a potential invasive threat. Three other part-time students from last year’s class carry over to this year to complete their MSc: Jane Birch, Alison Bird and Fiona Young.

6 PhDs

We were pleased to attend the winter graduation and see Montfort Mwanyambo collect his doctorate for his thesis on the phylogeny and biogeography of Plectranthus L’Hér. (Lamiaceae) and Maria Angelica Bello Gutierrez for hers on the evolution of the floral traits of Polygalaceae using an evolutionary developmental genetics approach. Angelica has been working away part of her time at Kew where she has been co-supervised by Dr Paula Rudall. We also congratulate Dr Dion Devey and Dr Martin Powell awarded PhDs earlier this year in Ophrys systematic and diversity in Oncidioid orchids, respectively. The research was carried out at Kew. Dr Chris Yesson also collected his PhD last July for his thesis ‘Investigating Plant Diversity in Mediterranean Climates’. Recently, Chris has been working part-time as cover for Dr Julie Hawkins while on maternity leave and part-time on Julie’s Darwin cactus project, coming to its formal end.

Since the last Herbarium News, Charilaos Saslis-Lagoudakis has joined us from Crete to research with Dr Julie Hawkins on the evolutionary origin of medicinal properties in plants (co-supervised by Vincent Savolainen, Imperial College, London and Professor Elizabeth Williamson, Shool of Pharmacy, Reading). We have also been joined by Zinnirah Shabdin (Irah) from Malaysia to research with Dr Alastair Culham. At present she is undertaking field work back home in Malaysia.

CAMPUS BRYOPHYTES AND LICHENS

Our MSc students have been out around the Whiteknights campus recently recording bryophytes and lichens. We have a long list of native and non-planted alien species produced 20-odd years ago which we plan to revisit as a student project. So far, we have a list of 60 bryophytes (51 mosses and 9 liverworts) and 22 lichens and there are 480 cards in an index box of different higher plants! These were originally compiled by Dr Stephen Jury and the late Mrs Carol Hora.

HYPOLITE BAYOR

Hypolite undertook a field trip to Ghana, 18th June-13th September 2008, in conjunction with his PhD project on the diversity of Diospyros in Ghana and the potential influence of climate change on its distribution. Ten different areas (forest and game reserves) were visited. Over 90 specimens were collected and pressed belonging to 16—17 species (out of the 19 reported to occur). The aim was to collect Diospyros for morphological studies, DNA analysis and gather information on the distribution. Trip was therefore highly successful!

Three main themes are involved the project: morphological diversity- developing computer based identification keys for Diospyros; genetic diversity and barcoding of Diospyros, and finally developing climate change models to predict suitable environment for Diospyros in the next 50—100 years.

7 CLIMATE CHANGE MEETING, DUBLIN

Dr Alastair Culham, Dr Chris Yesson and Claudia Ciotir (then an MSc student) attended the climate change meeting in Dublin and presented three papers and a poster:

Phyloclimatic models and plant distribution (Alastair Culham & Chris Yesson)

Climate change and the Cyperaceae (David A Simpson, A Muthama Muasya, Chris Yesson & Alastair Culham. David is a friend, graduate and collaborator of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and Dr Muasya their former research student)

Biogeography of Cyclamen: past, present and future (Chris Yesson & Alastair Culham)

Chris, Alastair, and Claudia in front of their poster: Future predictions of Cyclamen distribution in the Mediterranean Region.

SPECIES 200 – CATALOGUE OF LIFE

The Species 2000 and IT IS Catalogue of Life run by Frank Bisby continues to go from strength to strength. This year one million species was reached and launched at a symposium devoted to the Catalogue of Life last April at the Chinese Academy of Sciences in Beijing. Also of interest at this was the first product from the Chinese Catalogue of Life programme, one of the nodes in the multi-Hub network being established by Species 2000.

Dr Stephen L. Jury, Principal Research Fellow & Herbarium Curator, Centre for Plant Diversity and Systematics, School of Biological Sciences, The Harborne Building, University of Reading, Whiteknights, Reading, RG6 6AS, UK. email: [email protected] tel. +44 (0)118 378 8169 fax +44 (0)118 378 8160 http://www.herbarium.reading.ac.uk

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