UW Botanists Contribute to Monumental Plant Documentation Project |  
|
 |
May 10, 2007 -- Botanists at the University of Wyoming are making significant contributions to the production of a 30-volume documentation of the native and naturalized plants of North America.
The UW scientists, led by Ron Hartman, botany professor and director of the Rocky Mountain Herbarium, and Greg Brown, professor of botany, are among major contributors for the "Flora of North America" project that began in 1984 to "fill the need for scientifically reliable information on more than 20,000 species of North American plants found north of Mexico," Hartman says. He adds that the project is halfway finished; a total of 30 volumes will be published by 2011.
"We are compiling essential information necessary for effective conservation of biodiversity and for future use of plants for food, medicine and horticulture," Hartman says.
Hartman played a key role in preparing the Asteraceae volumes as author of Xanthisma, to which goldenweeds belong, and coauthor of Machaeranthera and Arid, (tansy-asters). Asteraceae is the largest family of plants in North America north of Mexico, with 2,413 species. Brown contributed the taxonomic treatment of Oonopsis, another group of goldenweeds.
In 2005, the volume containing the Pink or Carnation family was among those published. Hartman and Richard Rabeler, a colleague from the University of Michigan, edited that work of more than 200 published pages and wrote treatments for a large number of genera.
As director of the Rocky Mountain Herbarium, by far the largest facility of its kind between St. Louis, Mo. and Berkeley Calif., Hartman makes available tens of thousands of specimens of plants as reference material to botanists throughout the world.
Hartman, along with B.E. Nelson, herbarium manager, graduate students and associates, has been instrumental in building that research and teaching collection of pressed and dried plant specimens. They have conducted more that 50 major floristic studies in the Rocky Mountains, covering more than 170,000 square miles and resulting in more than 500,000 new plant collections.
As acknowledged experts on the flora of the Rocky Mountains, Hartman and Nelson provide critically important reviews of treatments of the region's plants and coordinate the reviews of other regional scientists such as Bonnie Heidel, botanist with the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database at UW.
"Our ultimate goal is the production of the ‘Flora of the Rocky Mountains' and a detailed atlas of the plants of the region," Hartman says.
The Flora of North America Association, a collaboration of botanists and botanical institutions, leads the documentation effort. More than 100 of them worked intensively for five years to complete three volumes, nearly 1,900 pages, describing all 2,413 species of the Sunflower family. Two additional volumes, the second of two books on grasses and the first of three on mosses, are the most recent to be published.
Photo
Botanists at the University of Wyoming demonstrate some of their contributions to the Flora of North America, a project started in 1984 to document the native and naturalized plants of North America. From left are Bonnie Heidel, botanist with the Wyoming Natural Diversity Database at UW, Ron Hartman, professor and director of the Rocky Mountain Herbarium, and B.E. Nelson, herbarium manager. (UW Photo)
Posted on Thursday, May 10, 2007
|
