Abstract
THE Anales (vol. 29, 1917) of the Museo Nacional de Historia Natural de Buenos Aires, recently received, a bulky volume of 700 pages, is devoted to the botany of the Argentine Republic. The earlier portion of the book contains the first part of a catalogue of the flowering plants, with the preparation of which Messrs. Hauman and Vanderveken have been occupied since the foundation of the botanical section of the museum in 1914. The catalogue consists of a list of all the species recorded for the area, under their families, which are arranged according to Engler's system. The entries in each family have been revised by the latest monograph dealing with the family in question. Under each species references are given to the publications on the authority of which the species is included. A systematic enumeration of the results of botanical explorations in this large area of temperate and sub-tropical South America has been much needed, and it is to be hoped that the authors will carry it to completion. A communication by Mr. Hauman on the orchids of the Argentine gives some indication of the work which remains to be done. Two main groups are represented, a sub-Antarctic (Patagonian-Andine) and a sub-tropical, the latter being the more important. The present work has increased by 50 per cent, the number of genera and species belonging to the sub-tropical group. Mr. Hauman also supplies a number of floristic notes, which conclude the series of memoirs he has already published on the Monocotyledons of the Argentine, in which he has added some seventy species to the flora, about one-third of which are new. The volume concludes with a revision by Mr. Carlos Spegazzini of the Argentine Laboulbeniales, that remarkable group of minute fungi which live parasitically on insects. The enumeration includes 213 species, each of which is carefully figured; a large proportion are described for the first time. The volume is a very important cohtribution to our knowledge of the botany of temperate South America.
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Botany of the Argentine Republic. Nature 109, 60–61 (1922). https://doi.org/10.1038/109060c0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/109060c0