The Jepson Manual, Vascular Plants of California

Nineteen years after The Jepson Manual (TJM), Higher Plants of California, appeared it has been superseded by the second edition with a somewhat different title, The Jepson Manual (TJM2), Vascular Plants of California (Baldwin et al. 2012, Hickman 1993). TJM2 is 168 pages longer and contains 30 more illustration plates, 100 more glossary items, and a wealth of plant evolutionary relationship information derived from modern genetic research. As with TJM, TJM2 contains many abbreviations, short plant descriptions, and reduced illustrations. To the uninitiated, the abbreviations can be daunting. The taxonomic treatments were written by 332 authors. I liked that authors who contributed to TJM and did not, or were unable to, contribute to TJM2 were still listed as authors or co-authors, even if they had since expired. This is one of the first major floristic works to follow the Angiosperm Phylogeny Group’s arrangement of families. The new arrangements certainly made creating keys to the 185 families more difficult, as evidenced by the 862 couplets spread out among 24 groups that cover 38 pages. That is a lot of couplets! I did a once-through and found that Asteraceae came out 12 times, Boraginaceae 14, and Plantaginaceae and Polygonaceae both came out 19 times. Even Limosella, in the Scrophulariaceae, came out 4 times. Two of the groups are quite innovative and are headed: ‘‘Herbs: bulblets dispersed in place of seeds or frs; available specimens without fls’’ and ‘‘Aquatic pls in vegetative condition; sporangia, sporangium cases, seeds, cones, or cone-like structures 0 or not readily apparent. ’’ It is nice to see allowances made for some specimens not in flowering condition. I tried the keys using a couple of oddball plants that lack petals and are in families that usually have petals, Glaux, now in the Myrsinaceae, and Cercocarpus in the Rosaceae. I found the keys to be concise; they flowed smoothly and lacked esoteric terminology. Then a critical test: How were the keys that contain the members of the old Scrophulariaceae? I again found the keys to be very workable, even in areas where the family keys literally become keys to genera. I also liked that when a family keys out in different groups, these groups are listed after the family name at the end of the couplet. This allows one to find the full range of variability within a family. In the text, the families are alphabetically arranged within 8 groups: Lycophytes, Ferns, Gymnosperms, Nymphaeales, Magnoliids, Ceratophyllales, Eudicots, and Monocots. At first, the arrangement seemed like it would lead to lost time looking for families; however, once I studied a little and got comfortable with the Nymphaeales, Magnoliids, and Ceratophyllales, it seems straightforward. After all, the Nymphaeales only contains 2 families, the Magnoliids includes 4, and the Ceratophyllales has 1. Furthermore, these 7 families are represented by only 11 genera and 15 species. I cut my botanical teeth on Munz & Keck (1959) and was wondering how things had changed in 53 years, so I compared that work with both Jepson Manuals (Table 1). What I found interesting was the changes in number of plant families. From TJM to TJM2, there was an increase of 12 monocot families. Seeing how the Liliaceae is now a shadow of itself, this increase was not surprising. In all, 14 new families were carved from Liliaceae. In addition, two families were lost, Lemnaceae was submersed into Araceae, and Cymodoceaceae, a non-native, was considered to be extirpated so it was not treated but was mentioned on page 1283, however, not on page 1280 as listed in the index. TJM had an appendix (Name changes from recent references) that I really appreciated and used. As the title suggests, this appendix was the place to check when looking for a familiar plant name that was not in the text. I suppose space could have been a deciding issue, as the appendix covered 40 pages in TJM. The introduction in TJM2 says this information is available online. I find this lack of synonyms a disconcerting omission. For instance, how was Pinus californiarum treated in TJM2? In TJM, it is listed as a synonym under P. monophylla, while it is not listed anywhere in TJM2. Pinus californiarum was described in 1987, and it Journal of the Torrey Botanical Society 141(2), 2014, pp. 186–187