Volume 5 No. 1 ISSN 1027–4286 April 2000 IN THIS ISSUE Editorial 2 Profile: Augustine Chikuni 3 SABONET Nyika Expedition 2000 5 Life at Natal Herbarium 15 SABONET Report Series update: 18 • Plant taxonomic and diversity expertise directory • Environmental interpretation in botanic gardens • Botanic Gardens Needs Assessment 16th IBC in St Louis 19 Southern African Plant Red Data List Workshop 23 Fantastic fungi need your support 25 Dealing with DDs 28 Mining in a biodiversity hotspot 32 Red Data List Assessment for Dalbergia melanoxylon 35 From the Web 36 Looking for a new research project? 38 Making keys work 40 Obituary: Rosemary Holcroft 46 The Paper Chase 51 Book Review: People’s Plants 57 E-mail Addresses 58 Regional News Update 66 FRONT COVER: The giant lobelia, Lobelia mildbraedii (Lobeliaceae), growing at Lake Kaulime, Nyika National Park, Malawi. this edition of our newsletter, with certainly more exciting reports and scientific findings expected once the more than 3 000 plant specimens that were collected during the expedition have been identified and analysed. This recent expedition was a great learning experience for all the participants, from the young botanists to the more experienced plant taxonomists, and will stand us in good stead for future regional expeditions planned within the project and beyond. The project’s philosophy is Editorial “learning by doing”, and we certainly learnt by doing on this recent expedition. The next regional Welcome to the 12th edition of SABONET News, the botanical collecting expedition is scheduled to be official newsletter of the Southern African Botanical held in Mozambique, probably in 2001, and will be Diversity Network Project, more commonly known as much, and possibly even more of a challenge, as SABONET. The major recent event that has taken particularly in terms of the logistics required. place within the project has been the completion of the project’s first regional botanical collecting In addition to our regular features, this issue reports expedition to the Nyika National Park in Malawi/ on the Southern African Red Data List Workshop Zambia. (The park straddles the international that was held towards the end of 1999 in South boundary between northern Malawi and Zambia.) A Africa, as well as a Red Data List Assessment by preliminary report on this expedition is included in Dickson Kamundi (National Herbarium, Malawi) of 2 SABONET News Vol. 5 No. 1 April 2000 Dalbergia melanoxylon. Readers can look forward to three new numbers in the SABONET Report PROFILE Series: an inventory on southern African plant taxonomic and diversity expertise, the results of a Augustine Charles Chikuni botanic gardens needs assessment survey that was conducted within the region last year, and a manual on environmental interpretation in botanic gardens. A couple of important international meetings will be taking place around the world over the next couple of months, and we hope to report on each of them in the August edition of our newsletter. COP V (5th Conference of Parties to the Convention on Biologi- cal Diversity) is being held in Africa (Kenya) for the first time and the International Botanic Gardens Congress is scheduled to be held in June in Asheville, North Carolina, USA. The New Interna- tional Agenda for Botanic Gardens in Conservation, to which the SABONET Project and the region’s botanic gardens contributed in June 1999, will be launched at this meeting. L Augustine Charles Chikuni. We trust you will enjoy reading this edition of our newsletter and that there will be something of K ugustine Charles Chikuni was born on interest and use to you. A25 October 1964 in a small village in Chiradzulu District, Malawi, the second-born son Christopher Willis from a family of four children. He completed his SABONET Regional Coordinator primary schooling at Chimwalira School 18 April 2000 (1970–1979), near Nasawa Technical School, Zomba District, and secondary education at Mwanza Secondary School in Mwanza District (1979–1983). In August 1983, he went to Bunda CONFERENCE College of Agriculture, University of Malawi, ANNOUNCEMENT where he completed a BSc (Agriculture) in 1988. After his BSc course he was employed as an Assistant Scientific Officer at the National SASAQS 2001: Aquatic ecology and Herbarium and Botanic Gardens of Malawi resource management in southern Africa (NHBG). Realising that he had very little The 36th conference of the Southern African Society of Aquatic Scientists will be held at taxonomic background, he attended a short plant Aventura Eco Eiland in the Northern Province, taxonomy course at the Biology Department, South Africa from 1st July to 6th July 2001. For Chancellor College, University of Malawi. further details please contact At the NHBG he was involved in the planning of Mr. P. Fouche the XIIIth AETFAT Congress, which took place Tel.: (27) 01596 28383 in Zomba in April 1991. In October 1991, he E-mail: [email protected] went to Reading University, UK where he completed a MSc degree in Applied Plant and Fungal Taxonomy. He studied the genus Achyrospermum Blum. (Labiatae) from southern Tropical Africa. He returned to Malawi in SABONET News Vol. 5 No. 1 April 2000 3 October 1992 and continued as a Scientific currently the National SABONET Coordinator Officer at the NHBG. On his return to Malawi he for Malawi. was requested by Prof. J.H. Seyani to assist with editing the proceedings of the plenary sessions of Augustine is interested in ethnobotanical the XIIIth AETFAT Congress; the proceedings research, especially botanical pesticides and were published in 1994. medicinal plant research. He is also interested in the systematics of tropical African In 1995, Augustine was awarded a scholarship by Caesalpinioideae legumes, especially the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission to Brachystegia, Isoberlinia and Julbernardia. He is do a DPhil at the Plant Sciences Department, currently revising the genus Isoberlinia. Having Oxford University, UK. He innocently chose to used morphological characters in the taxonomic study the genus Brachystegia Benth. for his study of Brachystegia, he feels that molecular DPhil. Although Brachystegia is one of the most techniques should be used to sort out infrageneric difficult tropical African genera, he managed to classification, species relationships and also the complete a wide-ranging monographic study of relationships of Brachystegia with other genera. the genus. He is at the moment preparing a monograph and a Flora zambesiaca account of He liked climbing little hills and fishing as a Brachystegia. On returning to Malawi in young lad and enjoyed singing gospel songs while February 1999, he continued as a Scientific at college. He now enjoys watching football and Officer until November 1999, when he was listening to music during his spare time.K appointed Acting Director of the NHBG. He is 4 SABONET News Vol. 5 No. 1 April 2000 SABONET Nyika Expedition 2000 by Christopher Willis, John Burrows & Pieter Winter “For in order to care deeply about something important it is first necessary to know about it. So let us resume old-fashioned expeditions at a quickened pace, solicit money for permanent field stations, and expand the support of young scientists—call them “naturalists” with pride—who by inclination and the impress of early experience commit themselves to deep knowledge of particular groups of organisms”. (Edward O. Wilson, Conservation Biology 14(1): 1–3, February 2000) s reported in the August 1999 edition of five duplicates of each specimen were collected. ASABONET News (Volume 4 Number 2, The intention is that the duplicates will be distrib- pages 118–123), a Regional Plant Collecting uted to the following regional southern African Expedition to the Nyika National Park in Malawi/ herbaria: National Herbarium, Malawi (MAL), Zambia was planned for the SABONET Project University of Zambia Herbarium, Zambia since May 1999. This expedition took place from (UZL), National Herbarium, Zimbabwe (SRGH), 22 March to 10 April 2000, and was successfully National Herbarium, South Africa (PRE), and completed by more than twenty botanists from INIA Herbarium, Mozambique (LMA). the southern and eastern African countries of Malawi, Mozambique, South Africa, Tanzania, Prior to the expedition, a small group of southern Zambia and Zimbabwe. The Nyika is the largest African botanists had worked hard to prepare a montane complex in south-central Africa, and preliminary plant checklist for the Nyika as a consists of rolling grasslands, dambos, forest working document during the expedition, as well patches and miombo woodlands on the plateau as species profiles on Nyika’s endemic plants. In escarpment. The expedition focussed on the addition, published illustrations of some of the following areas: the Zambian Nyika National plants that were known to occur on the Nyika Park, Chosi, Mwanda and Nganda Mountains, were compiled as a separate working document. Chisanga Falls, Fingira Rock, Dembo, Kaulime Previous estimates of the number of plant taxa and Wovwe Rivers, Nthakati Peak, Chelinda found on the Nyika have varied between 1 200 Bridge area, Mpopoti, Sangule Kopje, (Seyani, Chikuni & Kamundi 1991) and 1 420 Mbuzinandi, Vitinthiza Hill, Jalawe/Domwe (Patel, Brummitt, Overton & Overton 2000) plant area, miombo woodlands in the southwestern part taxa. Our preliminary estimates are significantly of the Nyika, as well as the Juniper Forest area. higher than this, probably closer to 1 800–1 900 Although some areas have been well collected by plant taxa, although the actual figure is probably previous botanists, such as in the Chelinda Bridge over 2 000. Several new distribution records and Nganda areas, we attempted as far as possi- were made for many Nyika plant taxa, including ble to target areas on the Nyika that had not been some of the strict Nyika endemic plants, such as well collected previously. Despite our intensive Setaria grandis (Poaceae) and Oxalis chapmaniae botanical collecting efforts over a period of two (Oxalidaceae).