Recent Visitors
Matt Taylor and Geoff Norton recently met with Dr Tom Croat (Missouri Botanical Garden) during his visit to Brisbane, Australia to discuss his plans for a series of Lucid keys to aroids. The Araceae is a large tropical family with large to massive genera. According to Dr Croat, the genus Anthurium is likely to be the largest genus of higher plants in the world and already is known to have 2000 species.
Obviously when dealing with genera of this size keeping track of the species in one’s head is impossible, and the Lucid key technology is essential. At present Dr Croat has prepared Lucid keys for most of the largest genera in the Neotropics including Anthurium and Philodendron (the two largest genera in the family) as well as to Adelonema, Dieffenbachia, Dracontium, Rhodospatha, Spathiphyllum, Stenospermation and Xanthosoma.
Many aroids are proving to be undescribed species and has already described over 3000 new species of Araceae. Presently he is experimenting with ways to use the Lucid 4 Builder to construct the dichotomous keys that are usually demanded of editors when revisions of genera are being published. Recently, with Missouri Botanical Garden Aroid Research Group member, Bob Hormell, he has finished writing a Revision of Anthurium sect.
Cardiolonchium, a group that contains some of the more horticulturally popular plants such as Anthurium sanquineum and A. warocqueanum so the publication of this work is likely to be of great significance to horticulturists and gardeners world-wide. We will keep you posted about the progress of these keys in a future newsletter. |
