Subject: [IBC] literature about tropicals and subtropicals
From: A /A (Walter Pall)
Date: Wed, Oct 22, 2003 12:44 PM
A good friend of mine is doing some research and wants to know about
literature for tropical and subtropical trees. He is mainly interested in Ficus. It
should be serious, scientific stuff. He wants to be able to tell the exact
species and possible variety in a botanical garden where they have gathered lots
of things over the years. Among them are some bonsai.

Identification of trees removed from their normal habitat is difficult. He
should start with a flora or field guide of the area he thinks they came from.
There is a book, Ficus, the Exotic Species by Condit, which is thorough and
exhaustive, but it is about 25 years old. For Madagascar, there is Flore de
Madagascar, by Perrier de la Bâthie. I don't know what has been done since. There
are two books named Trees of Southern Africa, one by Palgrave, the other by
Palmer & Pitman. I dare you to keep a straight face while reading the entries for
Welwitschia.
Ficus are mostly from Asia, but I am not familiar with the literature about
it, other than orchids. For conifers, you would go to Conifers of the World, by
Van Hoey-Smith et al.
Your friend should be aware that botanical identification of a bonsai is
going to be rather iffy, since many of the features which are used in visual
identification tend to get distorted, and many bonsai do not produce flowers or
fruit reliably. He may need to use DNA analysis.
Another problem of identification in a botanical garden is that many plants,
especially obscure varieties of conifers or bamboo, are extinct in the wild,
or nobody has any idea where they originated. Sadly, many important botanical
archives in Germany were destroyed during W.W.II.
I wish him luck.
Iris
I'm not fat; I just need repotting.

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