ALBERT

Description: Vochysia sectio Ciliantha Stafleu, subsectio Ferrugineae Warming. A V. vismiifolia Spruce ex Warming stipulis incrassatis, foliis lanceolatis longe acuminatis, floribus calcari longo modice incurvo, petalo intermedio stamen aequante, stigmate terminali parvo instructis differt. Holotypus: “coll. unknown” (comm. D. Allen) in U, fl. 14 Nov. 1953. PERU, Nanay River near Iquitos, altitude 100 m., “quillo sisa”, tree more than 100 feet high, on clayey soil about 20 feet above river (Isotypes: US 2104976, Y 47782).

Description: Erismadelphus Mildbr. is remarkable because it is the only African genus of the Vochysiaceae, a family represented in tropical America by no less than 5 genera and 180 species. Erismadelphus was discovered in 1913 by Prof. J. MILDBREAD and has hitherto been represented by only one species: E. exsul Mildbr. Recent examination of the African collections has, however, revealed the existence of two other taxa. Unfortunately the type of E. exsul (Mildbraed s.n. from Elon, French Cameroons) was destroyed at Berlin during the 1939-45 war and no duplicates or cotypes are known to exist. In response to an enquiry Prof. MILDBREAD, to whom we are very grateful, informed one of us that in his view Corbisier 1362 from Eala in Belgian Congo was identical with his original type. Prof. MILDBRAED and KEAY have, in fact, together examined Corbisier 1362 in the Herbarium of the Jardin Botanique de l’Etat at Bruxelles through the courtesy of Prof. ROBYNS. Duplicates of Corbisier 1362 are at Kew and Paris, they agree in every respect with MILDBRAED’s original description and figure and we therefore propose that this specimen be adopted as the neotype (lectotype).

Description: Joseph Gaertner (1732-1791) was the first to develop a carpological taxonomy in his book De fructibus et seminibus plantarum (1788-1791). The scope and background of this work are discussed; its history is sketched on the basis of the Banks correspondence at the British Museum; the main sources of material are listed. A brief outline of Gaertner’s life is given, also mainly based on letters from him and his contemporaries to Joseph Banks.

Description: Eén van de grote giften van A. A. Pulle, Lanjouw’s voorganger als Hoogleraar in de Bijzondere Plantkunde en de Plantengeographie te Utrecht, was zijn goede keus van medewerkers. Hij kon die keus maken dank zij een andere gift, die van leermeester. Pulle’s stimulerende activiteit als hoogleraar luidde de wedergeboorte in van de Nederlandse plantensystematiek door een stroom van leerlingen waarvan er velen ook nu nog een belangrijke rol spelen in de botanische wereld. Vele van Pulle’s leerlingen uit de eerste tijd moesten Utrecht verlaten omdat er in de twintiger jaren nu eenmaal nog geen sprake was van een redelijk gesalariëerde wetenschappelijke staf. Eén leerling echter werd zo gefascineerd door de vele mogelijkheden die het Utrechtse instituut bood, dat hij bleef, niettegenstaande de soms zeer ongunstige economische en organisatorische omstandigheden. Deze leerling, Lanjouw, toonde reeds toen de taaie volhardendheid die zijn medewerkers en leerlingen in later jaren zo goed leerden kennen en waarderen. Reeds van de eerste jaren van zijn assistentschap aan stonden Lanjouw de idealen voor ogen die hij in de loop van zijn lange loopbaan van assistent tot directeur voor het grootste gedeelte zou weten te realiseren. Deze loopbaan begon toen hij op 1 januari 1926 benoemd werd tot assistent bij de Bijzondere Plantkunde. In het jaar waarin we het feit herdenken dat het veertig jaar geleden is dat Lanjouw verbonden werd aan het Botanisch Museum valt ook de honderdenvijftigste verjaardag van het herbarium. Plantensystematiek is te Utrecht in meerdere of mindere mate beoefend van de stichting van de Universiteit af. Op 30 oktober 1816 echter werd het eerste herbarium voor de Universiteit verworven. In 1966 herdenken we dus eigenlijk twee jubilea. De periode van werkelijk actief systematisch onderzoek is echter veel korter geweest: de korte jaren van Miquel’s werkzaamheid (1859-1871) en de periode die in 1906 begon met de aanstelling van Pulle tot Lector in de plantensystematiek. Pulle gaf, voor het eerst na Miquel, en mede dank zij de stimulerende invloed van Went, een nieuwe stoot aan het plantensystematisch onderzoek in Nederland en wel vooral aan het onderzoek van de tropische flora’s. Een reeks van leerlingen wijdde zich onder zijn leiding aan de studie van de flora’s van Suriname en Nederlands Indië. Het is voldoende hierbij de namen van van Sloten, Lam, van Steenis, en Uittien te noemen om deze ontwikkeling te illustreren. Lanjouw koos voor zijn proefschrift de Surinaamse Euphorbiaceae en het was uit dit werk dat de „Flora of Suriname” voortkwam. Zonder ook maar iets tekort te doen aan de rol van Pulle kan gezegd worden dat van het begin van zijn loopbaan af Lanjouw actief heeft medegewerkt aan de opbouw van het Botanisch Museum en dat hij bij de ontwikkeling van de zo belangrijke „Flora of Suriname” een doorslaggevende rol heeft gespeeld. Zijn dissertatie „The Euphorbiaceae of Suriname” vormde, ten dele, tegelijk de eerste aflevering van de Flora.

Description: The University herbarium of Utrecht dates traditionally from the year 1816 when a collection of about 3000 plants was bought from the professor of botany M. van Geuns (1735-1817). It is possible that other collections of dried plants were already owned by the University or at any rate by the botanic garden, before that time, but nothing is known about this. The small van Geuns herbarium, which contained collections made by J. D. Hahn, M. W. Schwencke and S. J. van Geuns, among others, may therefore be taken as the starting-point of the herbarium of the later Botanical Museum.1)*) The period, however, was not one of great botanical activity at Utrecht and the botanist who succeeded van Geuns as professor of natural history and rural economy, Jan Kops, did little to increase the size of the collections. When C. A. Bergsma was appointed professor of botany in the faculty of natural sciences in 1835 nothing changed. Only when Miquel came to Utrecht, bringing his considerable personal herbarium, did scientific plant taxonomy get a chance. After his appointment as director of the Rijksherbarium in Leiden in 1862, Miquel was no longer allowed to have a private herbarium. His collections were taken over by the University of Utrecht and thus became the real foundation of the collection of the present institute. Miquel was succeeded by Rauwenhoff who was again scarcely interested in taxonomy, and it was not until Went and, somewhat later, Pulle, came on the scene that further development became possible. Went and Pulle are still too close for a biographical assessment; Miquel, however, is sufficiently far away. In him we find a man not only of great local fame, but also of international standing as a plant taxonomist. In the year, therefore, in which the Utrecht Botanical Museum commemorates the 150th anniversary of the acquisition of its first herbarium together with the 40th anniversary of its association with J. Lanjouw, it seems appropriate to give a sketch of the life and works of the man who can be considered to be the founder of the Utrecht school of plant taxonomy. By the nature of his work, by building up the collections, and through his international relations Miquel started taxonomy at Utrecht.

Description: The genus Callisthene is found in the Extra Amazonian part of the Brazilian mainland, particularly in the zone of the campos and in the adjacent parts of Bolivia. The genus comprises eight species, as defined in this paper. It shows its greatest diversity on the central plateau of the Brazilian state of Minas Geraes. Most of the species are typical trees of the campos of the interior Brazilian plateau, which is characterized by a climate with a severe dry season. The genus was first described by MARTIUS in 1824. He mentioned all important characters and placed it in the Vochysiaceae, a family which had been described only four years earlier by A. DE ST. HILAIRE (1820). It was named after Callisthenes (360—327 B.C.), the Greek naturalist and historian of Alexander the Great, relative and pupil of Aristotle. MARTIUS (l.c.) described 3 species, WARMING (1875 in the “Flora Brasiliensis”) 7, while BRIQUET (1919) added several others, only one of which — in the opinion of the present author — can stand after careful studies of the complete type material.

Description: The eighth volume of Flora Malesiana is dedicated to the memory of the Dutch botanist F. A. W. Miquel, who, even though he never visited the tropics, contributed greatly to the development of the knowledge of the Malesian flora. He did so not just through his well-known Flora Indiae Batavae, but certainly also through his role in re-activating the Rijksherbarium during and following the somewhat difficult aftermath of BLUME’S reign, and in rallying the support of Dutch and foreign botanists to study the many collections from the ‘East Indies’ which reached the Netherlands in the years between 1840 and 1870. Miquel also played an inconspicuous, but as it turned out, decisive part in the introduction of Cinchona in Java and last, but not least, left an important heritage in the person of his pupil Scheffer who became director of 's-Lands Plantentuin (Hortus bogoriensis) at Buitenzorg (Bogor), Java, in 1868 and who had a profound effect on the development of the gardens as well as on botanical and agricultural research in the former Netherlands East Indies. The Miquel period in Dutch systematic and tropical botany was characterized by an enthusiastic attempt to lay a foundation for a better knowledge of the Suriname and Indonesian floras; attempts which resulted in a preliminary, even though not always sufficiently critical, survey of what was known. A well organized home-basis for systematic studies was set up in the revitalized Rijksherbarium, and through Miquel’s own herbarium, sold to the University, a similar basis was established at Utrecht for the study of the Suriname flora. Miquel had good contacts with collectors in the field as well as with the gardens and herbarium at Buitenzorg (Bogor). At a time when the British colonial floras and the Flora Brasiliensis were written, he attempted to create at least a modest basis for similar Dutch activities for the study of the hitherto unsufficiently recognized and described dazzling tropical organic diversity. A brief biography is in order for this dedication as a late salute to a great botanist who could not even dream of the scope of the future Flora Malesiana, but who would have been one of its most enthusiastic supporters. For references to other literature and to sources I must refer to my more extensive biography and bibliography of Miquel published in 1966 and to the important collection of documents from which Miquel’s relations with his colleagues in Holland and abroad can best be seen, namely the collection of letters written to Miquel, now in the Utrecht University Library. Frequent correspondence was entertained with, for instance, Hasskarl, Horsfield, Junghuhn, Teysmann and Kurz, to mention only a few of Miquel’s more than 200 correspondents. These letters vividly illustrate the difficult conditions under which collectors and botanists worked, and often account for otherwise puzzling characteristics of the literature on the Malesian flora of the Miquel era.

Description: The genus Erisma is found in the Amazonian basin and in the Guianas; it comprises 16 species as defined in this paper, all of them typical Hylaean forest trees. The genus was first described by RUDGE in 1805; its name is a greek word meaning “a cause of dispute”. RUDGE may have wanted it to refer to the romantic story of the type-specimen of his Erisma floribundum, a specimen belonging to a set of plants collected by the Frenchman Martin in French Guiana and captured by British privateers on its way to Paris. The name was also well suited to indicate the difficult taxonomic position of the genus.

Description: This publication is intended to be the first part of a taxonomic monograph of the family Vochysiaceae and deals with the genera Salvertia and Vochysia. Since Warming’s excellent treatise of the Brazilian species of this family in the Flora Brasiliensis (Vol. XIII, II,1875) a large number of new species has been described, especially from neighbouring countries, and much new material has been collected. The fact that the number of species of Vochysia has been doubled since Warming may give a raison d’être to this monograph. A large quantity of material was kindly put at my disposal by several herbaria. These herbaria are indicated in this monograph by the following abbreviations proposed by the Standing Committee for Urgent Taxonomic needs of the International Botanic Congresses for the planned Index Herbariorum.

Description: Trigonia coppenamensis nov. spec. Liana; ramulis ferrugineotomentosis; petiolis 1.2—2.2 cm longis, tomentosis; laminis subcoriaceis, ellipticis vel obovato- vel oblongo-ellipticis, circiter 6—12 X 3—7 cm, apice acute-acuminatis, basi subrotundatis usque subcuneatis, supra tomentellis, subtus pilis flavescenticanescentibus tomentosis; nervis secundariis utroque 6—8 prope margine arcuato-adscendentibus; venis reticulatis, supra impressis; inflorescentiis terminalibus et axillaribus, rhachi ramisque dense ferrugineo-tomentosis; floribus in cymis plusminusve regularibus dispositis; pedunculis circiter 0.5 cm longis; pedicellis 0.3—0.5 cm longis; alabastro 0.3—0.5 cm longo; calicis lobis circiter 0.5 x 0.3 cm, obtuse rotundatis extus tomento cano-flavo indutae, intus glabris; petalis membranaceis, glabris, inaequalibus, petalo posteriore ad faucem sacculi ferrugineo-piloso; staminis fertilibus 6, filamentis fere usque ad apicem connatis; antheris 0.1 cm longis, apice subacutis; glandulis 2 vel 3 rotundatis vel irregulariter lobatis, ovario dense tomentoso; stylo glabro, stigmate albo, 0.1 cm diametro. Type; Maguire 24857, Suriname, Coppename R. Headwaters Schmidt Mt. km 10 in mixed wallaba forest. fl. Sept., in Utrecht herbarium (U.).