Corylus L. specimen’s conservation and reproduction in the botanic gardens and dendrological parks: an example of Corylus chinensis Franch.

Aim. Value of cultivated Corylus L. as a fruit, ornamental and oilseed crop with prospects for use in the food industry, feed production and pharmacy are grown under the hazelnut name, makes it necessary to improve the methods of conservation and reproduction of Corylus spp., which can be valuable sources of initial material for breeding. Involvement in a hybridization of the well-known cultivars of hazelnuts with Chinese hazel (C. chinensis Franch.) contributed to the cre- ation of several new cultivars, in particular ‘Sofiyivsky 1’ (‘Ukraine-50’×C. chinensis), Sofiyivsky 2’ (‘Dar Pavlenka’×C. chinensis), and ’Sofiyivsky 15’ (‘Garibaldi’×C. chinensis). However, in the process of studying the morphological features of C. chinensis from the collection of NDP “Sofiyivka” and analysis of the effectiveness of its interspecific interbreeding with other Corylus revealed their differences from the data given in the literature sources, which initiated our research. Materials and methods. Study of species-specific features of C. chinensis, hybridization, progeny analysis, clonal selection, propagation of selected seedlings, and generalization of the observations were performed using commonly used methods. Results and discussion. Comparison of morphological features of the C. chinensis imported from the Berlin Botanical Garden (Botanischer Garten Berlin-Dahlem) and its vegetative descendants with descriptions and photos given in the online database founded by the Royal Botanic Gardens Kew (Great Britain), showed the similarity of features of leaves, bark, and trunk with incomplete similarity of the infructescence, its shape, and downiness. It may indicate a hybrid origin of the introduced plant (Corylus…, 2017). The obtained data related to the value of C. сhinensis in hybridization with hazelnut cultivars using its male parent contradict the literature data that report on successful hybridization in direct combinations of C. chinensis×C. avellana and the incompatibility of these species in reciprocal crossing. Conclusions. It was found that the studied C. chinensis plants of generative age generally correspond to the descriptions of the species given in scientific sources and the electronic databases “Plants of the world Online” and “World Flora Online” in their morphological characteristics. However, the identified certain discrepancies indicate the need to continue their study, and the study of the others obtained from native sources of C. chinensis representatives, cultivars, and numerous interspecific hybrids using molecular and genetic DNA analysis methods.

A Collective Effort to Update the Legume Checklist

Taxonomic names are critical to the communication of biodiversity—they link data together whether it be distribution data, traits or phylogeny. Large taxonomic groups, such as many plant families, are globally distributed as is the taxonomic expertise of the family. A growing knowledge base requires collaboration to develop an up-to-date checklist as a research foundation. The legume (Fabaceae) community has a strong history of collaboration including the International Legume Database and Information Service (ILDIS), which curated the names but ILDIS is no longer up to date. In 2020, under the umbrella of the Legume Phylogeny Working Group (LPWG), a group of taxonomists began updating the legume taxonomy as part of a larger collaboration around a legume data portal. Currently the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP) is the most up-to-date reference and was used as the starting point for the project. The workflow begins with over 80 volunteer taxonomic experts updating the checklist in their specialty area. These lists are manually collated, centrally creating a consensus taxonomy with synonyms. Any taxonomic conflicts are adjudicated within the group. The checklist then undergoes a comprehensive nomenclature assessment at Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew and becomes part of the WCVP. This checklist was submitted to the Catalogue of Life Checklist Bank and is integrated as the preferred legume checklist in the GBIF taxonomic backbone. After one round of taxonomic curation, 38% of the legume names in GBIF (Global Biodiversity Information Facility), which were previously unmatched to WCVP, are now connected to GBIF names, therefore also improving the occurrence records of those species. The GBIF taxonomic backbone contains names found on herbarium specimens and in the literature, which are not currently part of the legume expert community checklist or WCVP. This list of unresolved names will be forwarded to the legume community for curation, thereby developing a cycle of data improvement. It is anticipated that after a few rounds of expert curation, the WCVP and GBIF taxonomies will converge. At each cycle, a snapshot of GBIF occurrences is taken and the improvement of the occurrences is quantified to measure the value of the expert taxonomic work. The current checklist is also available via Catalogue of Life and soon via the World Flora Online to support research. In this talk, we describe the workflow and impact of the expert curated legume taxonomy.

Challenges, Solutions, and Workflows Developed for the Taxonomic Backbone of the World Flora Online.

The World Flora Online (WFO) is the collaborative, international initiative to achieve Target 1 of the Global Strategy for Plant Conservation (GSPC): "An online flora of all known plants." WFO provides an open-access, web-based compendium of the world’s plant species, which builds upon existing knowledge and published floras, checklists and revisions but will also require the collection and generation of new information on poorly known groups and unexplored regions (Borsch et al. 2020). The construction of the WFO Taxonomic Backbone is central to the entire WFO as it determines the accessibility of additional content data and at the same time, represents a taxonomic opinion on the circumscription of those taxa. The Plant List v.1.1 (TPL 2013) was the starting point for the backbone, as this was the most comprehensive resource covering all plants available. We have since curated the higher taxonomy of the backbone, based on the following published community-derived classifications: the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group (APG IV 2016), the Pteridophyte Phylogeny Group (PPG I 2016), Bryophytes (Buck et al. 2008), and Hornworts & Liverworts (Söderström et al. 2016). The WFO presents a community-supported consensus classification with the aim of being the authoritative global source of information on the world's plant diversity. The backbone is actively curated by our Taxonomic Expert Networks (TEN), consisting of specialists of taxonomic groups, ideally at the Family or Order level. There are currently 37 approved TENs, involving more than 280 specialists, working with the WFO. There are small TENs like the Begonia Resource Center and the Meconopsis Group (with five specialists), medium TENs like Ericaceae and Zingiberaceae Resource Centers or SolanaceaSource.org (around 15 experts), and larger TENs like Caryophyllales.org and the Legume Phylogeny Working Group, with more than 80 specialists involved. When we do not have taxonomic oversight, the World Checklist of Vascular Plants (WCVP 2019) has been used to update those families from the TPL 2013 classification. Full credit and acknowledgement given to the original sources is a key requirement of this collaborative project, allowing users to refer to the primary data. For example, an association with the original content is kept through the local identifiers used by the taxonomic content providers as a link to their own resources. A key requirement for the WFO Taxonomic Backbone is that every name should have a globally unique identifier that is maintained, ideally forever. After considering several options, the WFO Technology Working Group recommended that the WFO Council establish a WFO Identifier (WFO-ID), a 10-digit number with a “wfo-” prefix, aimed at establishing a resolvable identifier for all existing plant names, which will not only be used in the context of WFO but can be universally used to reference plant names. Management of the WFO Taxonomic Backbone has been a challenge as TPL v1.1 was derived from multiple taxonomic datasets, which led to duplication of records. For that reason, names can be excluded from the public portal by the WFO Taxonomic Working Group or the TENs, but not deleted. A WFO-ID is not deleted nor reused after it has been excluded from the WFO Taxonomic Backbone. Keeping these allows for better matching when assigning WFO-IDs to data derived from content providers. Nevertheless, this implies certain considerations for new names and duplications. New names are added to the WFO Taxonomic Backbone via nomenclators like the International Plants Name Index (IPNI, The Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew et al. 2021) for Angiosperms, and Tropicos (Missouri Botanical Garden 2021) for Bryophytes, as well as harvesting endemic and infraspecific names from Flora providers when providing descriptive content. New names are passed to the TEN to make a judgement on their taxonomic status. When TENs provide a new authoritative taxonomic list for their group, we first produce a Name Matching report to ensure no names are missed. Several issues come from managing and maintaining taxonomic lists, but the process of curating an ever-growing integrated resource leads to an increase in the challenges we face with homonyms, non-standard author abbreviations, orthographic variants and duplicate names when Name Matching. The eMonocot database application, provided by Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, (Santarsiero et al. 2013) and subsequently adapted by the Missouri Botanical Garden to provide the underlying functionality for WFO's current toolset, has also proven itself to be a challenging component to update. In this presentation, we will share our hands-on experience, technical solutions and workflows creating and maintaining the WFO Taxonomic Backbone.

The Climate Change Alliance: botanic garden horticulturists as agents for change

In 2016, the publication of the pioneering Landscape Succession Strategy heralded a horticultural response by Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria to climate change risks faced by their living collections. This initiative led to the botanical world’s first Climate Change Summit in 2018 and the subsequent establishment of the Climate Change Alliance for Botanic Gardens. This article describes some of the anticipated climatic changes facing the Melbourne Gardens site, the strategic management of collections when considering these challenges, and how other botanical organisations can benefit from this approach through collaboration and sharing of expertise.

Gloeocantharellus andasibensis sp. nov. (Gomphaceae) from Madagascar

Gloeocantharellus andasibensis sp. nov. is recognized by orange-red basidiomata with a convex to plane, innately fibrillose and viscid pileus, ellipsoid to amygdaliform, small, verrucose basidiospores, and a distinct nrITS sequence. This is the first record of the genus from Madagascar. To improve the understanding of the nomenclature of the genus, the type specimen of G. okapaensis and specimens of G. lateritius and G. corneri accessioned in the fungarium of the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew were also sequenced.

Seed Banks as Incidental Fungi Banks: Fungal Endophyte Diversity in Stored Seeds of Banana Wild Relatives

Seed banks were first established to conserve crop genetic diversity, but seed banking has more recently been extended to wild plants, particularly crop wild relatives (CWRs) (e.g., by the Millennium Seed Bank (MSB), Royal Botanic Gardens Kew). CWRs have been recognised as potential reservoirs of beneficial traits for our domesticated crops, and with mounting evidence of the importance of the microbiome to organismal health, it follows that the microbial communities of wild relatives could also be a valuable resource for crop resilience to environmental and pathogenic threats. Endophytic fungi reside asymptomatically inside all plant tissues and have been found to confer advantages to their plant host. Preserving the natural microbial diversity of plants could therefore represent an important secondary conservation role of seed banks. At the same time, species that are reported as endophytes may also be latent pathogens. We explored the potential of the MSB as an incidental fungal endophyte bank by assessing diversity of fungi inside stored seeds. Using banana CWRs in the genus Musa as a case-study, we sequenced an extended ITS-LSU fragment in order to delimit operational taxonomic units (OTUs) and used a similarity and phylogenetics approach for classification. Fungi were successfully detected inside just under one third of the seeds, with a few genera accounting for most of the OTUs–primarily Lasiodiplodia, Fusarium, and Aspergillus–while a large variety of rare OTUs from across the Ascomycota were isolated only once. Fusarium species were notably abundant–of significance in light of Fusarium wilt, a disease threatening global banana crops–and so were targeted for additional sequencing with the marker EF1α in order to delimit species and place them in a phylogeny of the genus. Endophyte community composition, diversity and abundance was significantly different across habitats, and we explored the relationship between community differences and seed germination/viability. Our results show that there is a previously neglected invisible fungal dimension to seed banking that could well have implications for the seed collection and storage procedures, and that collections such as the MSB are indeed a novel source of potentially useful fungal strains.

Layer after layer: Aerial roots and routes of translation

When the Royal Botanic Gardens at Kew in South London were opened to the general public in the 1840s, they were presented as a ‘world text’: a collection of flora from all over the world, with the spectacular tropical (read: colonial) specimens taking centre stage as indexes of Britain’s imperial supremacy. However, the one exotic plant species that preoccupied the British cultural imagination more than any other remained conspicuously absent from the collection: the banyan tree, whose non-transferability left a significant gap in the ‘text’ of the garden, thereby effectively puncturing the illusion of comprehensive global command that underpins the biopolitical designs of what Richard Grove has aptly dubbed ‘green imperialism’. This article demonstrates how, in the 19th and early 20th centuries, the banyan tree became an object of fascination and admiration for British scientists, painters, writers and photographers precisely because of its obstinate non-availability to colonial control and visual or even conceptual representability.

Identification of the Triticoid-type grains (Poaceae) from archaeobotanical assemblages in southwest Asia as Heteranthelium piliferum (Banks & Sol.) Hochst.

The so-called Triticoid-type grains are known from several prehistoric sites in southwest Asia and their identification has long been unclear. They resemble the grains of wheats and researchers suggested they may represent an extinct Triticeae species, possibly closely related to wild crop progenitors. In this study we identify the Triticoid-type grains as Heteranthelium piliferum (Banks & Sol.) Hochst. and describe the key identification criteria. The identification is based on morphological analyses of modern and archaeological material from several grass species and was first achieved with well-preserved specimens from Early Neolithic Chogha Golan, Iran. We further examined the Triticoid-type grains from recently excavated samples from Early Neolithic Ganj Dareh, Iran, and archived samples from Late Chalcolithic and Late Bronze Age Tell Brak in northeast Syria, confirming their identification as H. piliferum. Based on the study of herbarium specimens at Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, London, we provide a detailed distribution map and review the species’ biology and ecological adaptations. Collected and cultivated herbarium specimens were analysed in order to understand the high phenotypic plasticity of the growth habit, its correlation with environmental variables and its relation to grain size. In order to understand the high morphological variability of the charred Triticoid-type grains from archaeological deposits, we assessed the effects of experimental carbonisation at different temperatures on grains of H. piliferum, Triticum dicoccum, T. thaoudar and Secale vavilovii. In light of the present study, we discuss the relevance of H. piliferum for reconstructing prehistoric subsistence strategies.

Coletas botânicas na zona costeira do estado do Maranhão, nordeste do Brasil.

A área costeira do estado do Maranhão representa, em grande parte, a diversidade ambiental, em especial vegetacional, do Brasil, pela sua extensão e posição geográfica transicional entre o Nordeste e o Norte do país. Este estudo pretendeu levantar, catalogar, analisar e classificar as espécies vegetais da flora de formações costeiras do estado do Maranhão presentes nas coleções e bancos de dados de jardins botânicos. Foram levantadas as espécies vegetais da zona costeira do Maranhão presentes nas coleções dos seguintes jardins botânicos: New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY, USA; Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA; Royal Botanic Gardens (KEW, UK); e Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro (JBRJ, Brasil). As seguintes informações foram extraídas: a) número total de espécies nas quatro instituições, por município costeiro do estado; b) espécies mais coletadas e menos coletadas; c) tipologias de vegetação nas áreas coletadas; d) espécies mais representativas nas tipologias de vegetação; e) formas de crescimento das espécies coletadas; f) distribuição temporal das coletas e das espécies coletadas; g) presença e ausência de espécies em faixas temporais das coletas botânicas. Os dados coletados e as diferentes abordagens nas análises mostraram, no geral, que a área territorial estadual é insuficientemente coletada, com baixo número de coletas, além de temporalmente mal representadas. O estudo resume a realidade vegetal maranhense nos acervos das principais instituições botânicas do mundo e do Brasil. Botanical records of coastal formations in Maranhão, northeastern Brazil A B S T R A C TThe coastal area of the state of Maranhão represents, to a large extent, the environmental diversity, especially the plant diversity, of Brazil, due to its extension and transitional geographical position between the Northeast and the North regions of the country. This study aimed to survey the plant species of the flora from coastal plant formations in the state of Maranhão present in the collections and databases of botanical gardens. Plant species from the coastal zone of Maranhão in the collections of the following botanical gardens were surveyed: a) New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY, USA; b) Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA; Royal Botanic Gardens (KEW, UK); and Botanical Garden of Rio de Janeiro (JBRJ, Brazil). The following information were extracted: a) total number of species in the four institutions, by institution, by coastal state municipality; b) more collected species and less collected species; c) types of vegetation in the areas collected; d) more representative species in types of vegetation; e) forms of growth of the species collected; f) temporal distribution of collections and species collected; g) presence or absence of species in collection time frames. The data collected and the different approaches from the analysis showed, in general, that state territorial area is insufficiently collected, with a low number of collections, in addition to collections that are temporally poorly represented. This study summarizes Maranhão’s plant reality in the collections of the main botanical institutions of the world and Brazil.Keywords: botanical collections, herbarium, Maranhão.