Recording ‘tropical’ adventives in Britain and Ireland – a possible solution?
not concern us here. However, she did neotypify the name Oxalis mirbelii Dehnhardt on a specimen cultivated in 1853 in Vienna, thus ensuring correct application of the name. The type can be viewed online here: herbarium.univie.ac.at/database/detail. php?ID=1007038.
References
Dandy, J.E. & Young, D.P. 1959. Plant Notes. Oxalis megalorrhiza. Proceedings of the Botanical Society of the British Isles 3: 174–175. Feuillée, L.E. 1714. Journal des Observations 2: 734–735, t.25. Paris. Heibl, C. & Renner, S.S. 2012. Distribution models and a dated phylogeny for Chilean Oxalis species reveal occupation of new habitats by different lineages, not rapid adaptive radiation. Syst. Biol. 61: 823–834. Hooker, W.J. 1828. Oxalis carnosa. Curtis’s Botanical Magazine 55: t.2866. Jacquin, J. F. 1794. Oxalis. Monographia, Iconibus Illustrata. p. 33. Vienna.
King, R. 1985. Tresco, England’s Island of Flowers. Salem House, Salem. Lindley, J. 1827. Oxalis carnosa. Botanical Register 13: t.1063. Lousley, J.E. 1971. The Flora of the Isles of Scilly. David & Charles, Newton Abbot. Lourteig, A. 2000. Oxalis L. subgeneros Monoxalis (Small) Lourt., Oxalis y Trifidus Lourt. Bradea 7: 201–629. Parslow, R. & Bennalick, I. 2017. The New Flora of the Isles of Scilly. Parslow Press. Stace, C.A. 2019. New Flora of the British Isles (4th edn). C & M Floristics, Middlewood Green, Suffolk, p. 325. Whaley, O.Q., Orellana-Garcia, A. & Pecho-Quisepe, J.O. 2019. An annotated Checklist to Vascular Flora of the Ica Region, Peru – with notes on endemic species, habitat, climate and agrobiodiversity. Phtyotaxa 389: 1–125.
Julian M.H. Shaw
Horticultural taxonomy, Science & Collections, Royal Horticultural Society, Wisley, Woking GU23 6QB julianshaw@rhs.org.uk
Recording ‘tropical’ adventives in Britain and Ireland – a possible solution? ALEXIS FITZGERALD
I
was very glad to see that my reporting of Pilea microphylla as a ‘tropical’ adventive in the April 2020 issue of BSBI News (FitzGerald, 2020) had intrigued some botanists (Milne, 2020), and posed the question as to how we are best to address more generally the issue of recording and mapping adventive/alien species which can only survive in artificially created, indoor, tropical-like environments in Britain and Ireland. Milne (2020) suggested various possible strategies, which included the more extreme options of either excluding or including all exclusively indoor alien plant records, as well as more middleground approaches of including records of species that occur outside of botanic gardens glasshouse settings (such as in indoor plant nursery or office/ home environments), or ‘that have naturalised independently in two or more indoor locations’. His final suggestion was perhaps most intriguing, with the idea of maintaining a new and separate ‘vice-county’ for these indoor species. To me, it 56
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would seem most appropriate not to include these ‘tropical’ species with the rest of our standard distribution maps and analyses, unless and until they show themselves capable of surviving (even very casually) outdoors. However, operating on the principle that more information is always better than less in science, it would seem advisable to instead establish a detailed and routinely updated spreadsheet of records of adventive species (both vascular plants and bryophytes) of these indoor tropical-like environments across Britain and Ireland, whether they are survivors, casual or truly naturalised (as per Stace & Crawley [2015] and Stace [2019]. I would be happy to volunteer my time to establish and maintain such a database. However, other botanists may already be doing this in some fashion, unbeknownst to myself, and so their contacts and guidance would be much appreciated, and I would be more than happy to pass on the baton if someone else was particularly keen and engaged.
