From: london@sunSITE.unc.edu (Larry London)
Subject: B.E.N. #47
Organization: University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Date: Wed, 23 Dec 1992 17:29:05 GMT

BBBBB    EEEEEE   NN   N          ISSN 1188-603X
BB   B   EE       NNN  N
BBBBB    EEEEE    NN N N          BOTANICAL
BB   B   EE       NN  NN          ELECTRONIC
BBBBB    EEEEEE   NN   N          NEWS

No. 47                            December 20, 1992

Address: aceska@cue.bc.ca         Victoria, B.C.
----------------------------------------------------


EDITORIAL
From: Adolf Ceska <aceska@cue.bc.ca>

1. Have a nice holiday season and happy new year 1993 !

2. I apologize for a long gap in BEN. I was in Costa Rica
and lost touch with reality. Can you imagine a country that
would preserve over 25 per cent of the land in national
parks or biological reserves? 

3. I heard from several subscribers that they did not get BEN
nos. 43 and 44. I don't know, how selective this blackout was,
but if you did not get these issues and would like to have them,
drop me a note.

4. I would like to thank all of you who sent me contributions
for 1992 BEN. Many thanks. If you have any news, notes, messages
or ideas to share with other BEN addicts, BEN will be pleased to
hear from you.


SPIKED SPUDS KEEP BEETLES AT BAY
From: New Scientist (22 Aug 1992)

Jeffrey Wyman and his colleagues at the University of Wisconsin
at Madison implanted a gene that produces a toxin lethal to the
Colorado Beetle into potato. The toxin that kills Colorado
beetles comes from Bacillus thuringiensis tenebronis. The gene
was implanted in a number of varieties of potato. [I hope the
Yukon Gold is among them. - AC]


DATURA PREPARATIONS BANNED IN FRANCE
From: New Scientist (22 August 1992)

Herbal medicines made from Datura were banned from sale in
France last week after three teenagers died from overdose of
atropine. Datura stramonium has been the base of anti-asthma
cigarettes, first approved for sale by prescription in the
1920s. Smoking a cigarette made from about 1 gram of crushed
datura relaxes bronchial muscles, calming the symptoms of
asthma. This treatment is still preferred by many elderly French
asthmatics.


WHEATGRASS, GRAMA-GRASS, AND THE ROCKY MOUNTAIN BARRIER [BEN #36]
From: R.T. Ogilvie, Royal BC Museum, Victoria, B.C. Canada
      <bogilvie@galaxy.gov.bc.ca>

Don Gayton raised some questions in BEN No. 36 about the Rocky
Mountain boundary between bluebunch wheatgrass and blue-grama
grass. Here are some answers and some more questions. I enjoyed
talking to him at the Botany B.C. meetings at Lac le Jeune, and
also reading his book The Wheatgrass Mechanism.

The Rocky Mountain massif is a major physiographic barrier
separating the central plains and the western cordilleran areas.
This geographic barrier results in a major climatic demarcation
between the more maritime climate to the west and the strongly
continental climate to the east. Although the Rockies are an
obvious floristic boundary between the arid prairie flora and
the moist cordilleran forests, the mountains are by no means a
complete barrier for all plant species. For example, Douglas
fir, Rocky Mountain juniper, western red cedar, western larch,
and western yew all extend on to the east side of the Rockies,
mostly as rare scattered individuals but some of these species
form dominant communities. Likewise, many of the eastern prairie
species extend across into eastern B.C., for example: the orange
lily - Lilium philadelphicum, wild bergamot - Monarda fistulosa,
prairie cactus - Opuntia polyacantha, scarlet globe-mallow - 
Sphaeralcea coccinea, low larkspur - Delphinium bicolor,
ground-plum - Astragalus crassicarpus. 

What about the grasses crossing the Rockies? Both bluebunch
wheatgrass - Agropyron spicatum [=Pseudoroegneria spicata] and
Idaho fescue - Festuca idahoensis occur extensively along the
east slope of the Rocky Mountains and Foothills from the Bow
River southward. In this area these two species of the
Bunchgrass Prairie overlap with blue grama-grass - Bouteloua
gracilis of the Mixedgrass Prairie. Bouteloua gracilis is known
in B.C. only from a few isolated populations in the southern
Rocky Mountain Trench and a disjunct occurrence along the Fraser
Valley in the southern Cariboo. The Rough Fescue Grassland
occurs on both sides of the Rockies dominated by Festuca
campestris, while a closely related taxon, Festuca hallii, is
the dominant rough fescue of eastern Alberta, Saskatchewan and
Manitoba. Finally, little bluestem - Schizachyrium scoparium
[=Andropogon scoparius] one of the dominants of the eastern
Tallgrass Prairie extends westward into the foothills west of
Calgary. It has been collected from two localities in the Rocky
Mountain Trench of southeastern B.C.; both are considered by
their collectors to have been introduced or planted there.     

Botanists have long attributed different paleobotanical origins
and history to these different grasslands, and recent
ecophysiological research has found fundamental differences in
the photosynthetic pathways of some of the dominant grasses. The
Bouteloua gracilis grassland originated in the arid southwestern
U.S. and adjacent Mexico, and many of its species, including
Bouteloua gracilis, are C4 species adapted to growth and
photosynthesis at high temperatures. At the northern extent of
this grassland in Canada there are approximately equal
proportions of C4 and C3 species. The Agropyron spicatum
grassland originated in the intermountain area in the rainshadow
of the Coast-Cascade-Sierra Mountain axis; most of its species
have boreal affinities and are C3. Also, the Rough Fescue
grassland species have a northern origin and are mostly C3
species. Lastly, the Schizachyrium scoparium grassland had a
southeastern origin and includes several C4 species including
the little bluestem.

The grasslands on the two sides of the mountains have ancient
origins; the Agropyron spicatum grassland is about 3 million
years old, and the Bouteloua gracilis grassland is about 13
millions years old. Since Late Miocene-Pliocene time there have
been major climatic changes involving dry periods, wet periods,
cold periods, warm periods, glacial and interglacial periods. In
our area, at the northern extremity of these grasslands, this
has meant numerous sequences of migrations and immigrations
bringing the species in contact with species of different
geographic regions, resulting in grasslands of
phytogeographically diverse composition.           

Some of the earlier papers on these grasslands are by Daubenmire
(1975:Journ. Biogeography 2:1-18; 1978:Plant Geography; 1982:MoF
Grassland Symposium). There is an interesting paper by Leopold &
Denton, 1987, Ann. Miss. Bot. Garden 74:841-867. 

Finally, Dale Guthrie, in his research on the Beringian "Mammoth
Steppe" in Alaska (1990) has found compacted plant fragments of
Agropyron, Danthonia, and Salix in the molars of a 36,000 year
old ice-fossilized bison. His 1982 paper (in Paleoecology of
Beringia, p. 323) mentions that he had the nest materials of
Wisconsin-age fossil ground squirrels from Alaska, identified at
the Colorado State University Laboratory, and the plant material
included Bouteloua. As he says, this find is several thousand
miles north of the presently known range of Bouteloua in south-
central Alberta.   

Obviously, we need a lot more paleobotanical research and
critical paleoecological interpretation of the fossil data, the
modern floristic distributions, and species ecophysiology. 


NEW PUBLICATION - THE BOREAL FOREST CONFERENCE PROCEEDINGS 

Twenty speakers, from across Canada, addressed tourism, native
issues, forest fires, snow as habitat, peatlands, rivers, trees,
government and industry positions, climate change, citizen
advocacy, conservation strategies, and small scale timber
operations.  And, the audience of over 200 responded in question
and answer sessions.

The Proceedings, published with the help of Athabasca
University, is now ready to mail out.  To order a copy make your
cheque for $14.00 ($10.00 plus $4.00 postage and handling)
payable to  (amounts in Can. $)
Boreal Forest Committee,
Box 1351, Athabasca, Alberta, Canada T0G 0B0

For further information contact:

Louis Schmittroth, tel. 403-675-4408, email:
louis@cs.athabascau.ca, or Joan Sherman, tel. 403-675-6340,
email: joan@cs.athabascau.ca


BOTANIST LOOKING FOR JOB

If you know about any job for a botanist with 

1) good knowledge of British Columbia vascular plants
   (especially pteridophytes, sedges, rushes, aquatics, and
   other critical groups);
2) wide collecting experience in British Columbia and
   the Pacific Northwest (over 30,000 "numbers" since
   1969);
3) good knowledge of ecology of British Columbia 
   plants and plant communities;
4) expertise in development of vegetation classification
   techniques:
   
please send a note to the editor of BEN. The botanist in
question can take contract jobs or be seconded or transferred 
within the British Columbia government.