American Fern Journal 60 (4): 167-169 (1970)

PACIFIC NORTHWEST FERNS AND THEIR ALLIES, by T. M. C. Taylor. University of Toronto Press, 33 East Tupper St., Buffalo, N. Y. 14203. 1970. 247 pp.,illustr. $15.00.-

This is the first fullfledged local fern flora to appear in several years. The area covered includes that treated recently in the "Vascular Plants of the Pacific Northwest" (reviewed in this JOURNAL 60 : 34-38. 1970), but is more extensive, since all of British Columbia, the Yukon Territory, and all of Alaska is included. The number of species treated is 97, about a quarter of all those known from North America north of Mexico. Many of these are boreal plants familiar in the eastern United States and Canada and many occur also in Eurasia. Twenty-seven are western American endemics (but not local endemics, except for Botrychium pumicola, confined to the region of Crater Lake, Oregon). The species all have full descriptions and most of them have distribution maps and line drawings. The latter are very good, so good that most species can be easily recognized from the drawings alone. (I would except the drawing of Polystichum scopulinum, which shows a plant not typical of this species and which might even represent P. kruckebergii instead.) The systematic treatment is commendably conservative. The comments indicate the variations found and some of the taxonomic problems still unsolved. There are few errors indeed, and the comments below are of strictly minor importance.

The authority of Blechnum spicant is not "J. Sm." but Roth (cf. this Journal 34: 51. 1944); incidentally, it is usual to use "J. Sm." for John Smith; the author intended here was not John Smith but Sir James Edward Smith, usually cited as J. E. Smith, for the abbreviation of Smith to "Sm." is really not sanctioned by the Code. The work in which Dryopteris was published by Adanson is not "Farn Pl." but "Fam. Pl." In the description, the sori of Polypodium montense are said to be "submarginal," but in the drawing they are shown as about medial (for a comment on the name "montense" see this JOURN6A0:L 1 26-7. 1970). Polypodium virginianum is described as having the segments ((linear-oblong to lanceolate . . . obtuse at apex," which is essentially correct, although the apex does vary from rounded to acute, but in the comments it is said to be distinguishable from P. montense by the segments being "narrowly ovate with acute tips," which is not true and which contradicts not only the description but also the drawing, which shows the segments as oblong and rounded at apex. In the synonymy of Thelypteris nevadensis, the first line ought really to be "ex Morton, Amer. Fern J. 48: 139. 1958," as required by the Code; otherwise it appears that Clute published the name some eight years after his death. The Azolla of the area is referred to A. mericana, following Svenson; the report of A. filiculoides from Alaska by Svenson is rejected with the statement "almost certainly an aquarium escape," which is perhaps an unwarranted assumption, since the specimen was collected in 1868, an early period in the history of Alaska when aquaria must have been essentially unknown; still, the record must be considered doubtful since no other Alaskan material has ever turned up. There are specimens in the U. S. National Herbarium from Oregon and Washington that have been identified as A. filiculoides (and subsequently to Svenson's treatment), but they are sterile, I believe, and so somewhat doubtful. An effort should be made to collect fertile material from these states. Possibly Svenson overstressed the character of the septae in the glochidia, and his treatment has never been critically evaluated. Although it is irrelevant here, I might mention that although Svenson indicated that A. caroliniana must spread solely by vegetative means, since megaspores are never found in American material, some recent European workers have described the megaspores of this species, considered introduced in Europe. It is possible that the European plants so identified are not really A. caroliniana, and the matter should be investigated. It is rather too bad that this book perpetuates the spellings "sabinaefolium, " "matricariaefolium, " and "andromedaefolia"; although these were the original spellings, Art. 73, Kote 2, says that the use of a wrong connecting vowel is to be treated as an orthographic error, and Art. 73 itself indicates that orthographic errors are to be corrected; thus the correct spellings are "sabinifolium," ('matricariifolium," and "andromedifolia." One feature, which does not at all detract from the book but which is sufficiently peculiar to deserve mention, is the placing of Selaginella at the end, following the Polypodiaceae, instead of at the beginning, with Lycopodium, Isoëtes, Equisetum, and other fern allies.-C.V.M.