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Paper Floras: How Long Will They Last? a Review of Flowering Plants of the Neotropics1

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Paper Floras: How Long Will They Last? a Review of Flowering Plants of the Neotropics1 American Journal of Botany 91(12): 2124±2127. 2004. BOOK REVIEW PAPER FLORAS: HOW LONG WILL THEY LAST? A REVIEW OF FLOWERING PLANTS OF THE NEOTROPICS1 W. J OHN KRESS2,3 2Botany, MRC-166, United States National Herbarium, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution, P.O. Box 37012, Washington, D.C. 20013-7012 USA Flowering Plants of the Neotropics compiled and edited by and description), but have partially failed in the fourth (clas- a team of leading botanists at the New York Botanical Garden si®cation). The work is quite comprehensive in the inclusion (Smith et al., 2004) is magni®cently illustrated and rich in of all 284 families that have any native taxa represented in the authoritative data about the 284 native families of tropical an- neotropics as well as important introduced species and culti- giosperms currently found in the Western Hemisphere. Com- vars. The keys (grouped in an appendix) and illustrations (in- piling information from over 150 contributors and specialists cluding 308 color photographs and 258 black and white line on various groups of plants was clearly a task of signi®cant drawings) together provide a generally reliable means of iden- dimension and the authors are to be congratulated for their ti®cation of plants to family and in some cases to genera (al- contribution to the literature on neotropical ¯owering plants. though a few seem misplaced, e.g., Piriqueta for Turnera) and This volume follows on the heels of other contemporary con- even species (as far as I have been able to attempt although I tributions to this subject, such as Maas and Westra's (1998) haven't used it extensively yet in the ®eld for reasons noted more modest treatment on neotropical plant families, Al Gen- below). For each family treatment we are provided with in- try's (1996) wide ranging and highly idiosyncratic tome on formation and notes on critical morphological features, taxo- plants of northwestern South America (also widely applicable nomic diversity, distribution and habitat, classi®cation, natural throughout the neotropics), the very detailed ®eld guide to the history, and ethnobiologial uses; some critical literature ref- plants of the Ducke Reserve near Manaus in Amazonian Brazil erences are also included. These data provide a wealth of in- (similarly of considerable value throughout the Amazon Ba- formation about each family that allows the reader to put the sin), and ®nally the ``in progress'' manual of plants of Costa particular plant family into an ecological, geographical, and Rica orchestrated by Hammel, Grayum, Herrera and Zamora economic framework. The extensive illustrated glossary is a (2003) that will serve as the gold standard for national tropical luxury. ¯oras when completed. These publications collectively tell us And if one wants to know how Arthur Cronquist (1981) and that we know a surprising and considerable amount about the Rolf Dahlgren (and colleagues; 1985), two renowned but now ¯owering plants of the tropical Americas. deceased authorities on angiosperm classi®cation, circum- This most recent contribution by Smith and colleagues scribed and classi®ed neotropical dicot and monocot families, (2004) hovers between a taxonomic monograph and a typical respectively, then the co-editors might consider that they have ¯ora in that on the one hand it provides an in-depth treatment succeeded in the fourth purpose of ¯oras as well. This last of a speci®c monophyletic group of plants (the angiosperms), point identi®es one of the most curious, and perhaps disap- but on the other it is restricted in scope to only those taxa pointing, aspects of the volume. In the age of molecular sys- found in a distinct geographic region, the neotropics. All tematics and the growing acceptance of a new consensus clas- things being considered one would have to categorize this si®cation of the ¯owering plants by the Angiosperm Phylog- broad-based reference volume as a family-level ¯ora of the eny Group (1998, 2003; hereafter APG), why have Smith and neotropics. In general we use ¯oras for the purposes of inven- co-editors regressed to the classi®cations and circumscriptions tory (knowing what taxa are present in an area), identi®cation of Cronquist and Dahlgren? They claim that using the older (knowing the names of the taxa we ®nd or study), description systems makes ``identi®cation of neotropical plants to family (knowing more about the taxa than we currently do), and clas- a great deal easier.'' si®cation (knowing how taxa are related to other taxa within But does it? Or is it just easier for those who have used as well as outside the focal region). Published ¯oras (as those these former systems for two decades? And if that is the case, cited above) vary in their success in providing information in why not go back to Engler and Prantl's (1887±1915) system each of these four categories. which has been effectively used for a century? Admittedly, the How does Flowering Plants of the Neotropics compete as APG, which has in large part resulted from new insights about a ¯ora with respect to these criteria? The authors have done a relationships gained from DNA sequence data, recognizes a great job in the ®rst three categories (inventory, identi®cation, number of segregate families, e.g., in the lilioid monocots, and aggregate families, e.g., the Malvaceae sensu lato, that are de- 1 Smith, Mori, Henderson, Stevenson, and Heald [eds.]. Princeton Univer- ®ned by anatomical, biochemical, and developmental charac- sity Press, Princeton, New Jersey, USA. ISBN 0-691-11694-6. The author ters, but lack easily distinguishable diagnostic morphological thanks P. Belhumeur, D. Jacobs, S. Feiner, R. Ramamoorthi, R. Russell, K. features useful in identi®cation. However, only when we start Wurdack, L. Weigt, D. Janzen, V. Funk, and W. Wagner for helpful discussion in preparing this review. working within the framework of a new classi®cation will we 3 Author for reprint requests (phone: 202-633-0920; FAX: 202-786-2563; ever discover new characters and new relationships to use for e-mail: [email protected]). such purposes. The co-editors state that they wish ``to provide 2124 December 2004] BOOK REVIEW 2125 a book re¯ecting current knowledge of the ¯owering plants of doing in 20 years? Answers to these questions will determine the neotropics that can be used by amateur and professional how books such as this one will be used in the future and thus biologists alike.'' Unfortunately they have missed a real op- how they will be constructed. portunity to provide the ®rst comprehensive family ¯ora of the In the age of bioinformatics, ®eld taxonomists of the future neotropics based on an up-to-date and modern classi®cation exploring the remaining natural habitats on the planet must system. have immediate access to the vast store of biodiversity infor- If this volume were a real ®eld guide (but at over 600 pages mation now contained in our libraries, museums, and botanical and 2.7 kilos it is not) with the primary purpose of identi®- gardens (Bisby, 2000; Edwards et al., 2000). One can envision cation, then there might be more justi®cation for simply fol- that in the next half century during what will probably be the lowing an old system of classi®cation. But since this book will ®nal great age of biological exploration the electronic natu- be primarily used in the classroom and herbarium as a primary ralist will be equipped with new technologies to enhance and reference tool, there is no excuse to follow an outmoded sys- accelerate his/her work, including micro-global positioning tem of classi®cation. I predict that this book will ®nd itself systems, palm-top computers, web-based satellite communi- mostly on the bookshelves of botanists in their of®ces, her- cation, and mini-DNA samplers and sequencers (Wilson, 2000; baria, and even tropical ®eld stations and will be referred to Kress, 2002; Kress and Krupnick, 2005). The plant explorers when someone wants to know more about a plant that they of the future will comb the remaining semi-pristine habitats of have already determined to be in a speci®c family. I truly the Earth identifying and recording the characters and habitats doubt that anyone is going to carry this tome in their backpack of plant species not yet known to science. With remote wire- solely to identify to family-level unknown plants found in the less communication the ®eld botanist will be able to imme- ®eld in the neotropics. The co-editors do provide an appendix diately compare newly collected plants with type specimens for cross-referencing the Cronquist and Dahlgren family cir- and reference collections archived and digitized in museums cumscriptions to the classi®cation used by Judd et al. (2002; thousands of miles away. The information gathered by these slightly different than the APG taxa), but they would have botanists will be sent with unimaginable speed to their col- been better advised to organize the book by APG with cross- leagues back in the lab where the genetic composition and reference to the classi®cations of Cronquist, Dahlgren, and phylogenetic position of each new species will be immediately even Engler and Prantl. The alphabetical organization of the determined. The habitat data will be modeled with unparal- family treatments (and the photographs) within the dicots and leled accuracy by super computers to determine the place of the monocots is also irritating if one wants to easily compare each species in its respective ecosystem. And the biochemical closely related families (see Funk, 2003). constituents of each species will be automatically screened and One of my biggest suggestions, which has been echoed by analyzed for any compounds that may be of bene®t to society.
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