HAPPY BIRTHDAY FROM DAVID AND BARBARA MURRAY!

Happy 100th Birthday wishes and thanks. Below are a few thoughts on what we remember most.

David Murray: As your graduate student, I expected to develop in ways that would secure me a place in systematic botany. Once launched, of course, what I accomplished was entirely up to me, but I needed the important tools with which to start. You exposed me by your example to things that have been crucial to my growing interest in the botany of arctic and alpine environments. First was your insistence that I should get into the field and learn the plants on the ground. The second was that I should expect to synthesize from the literature of differing taxonomic traditions, written in several languages and likely not primarily in English. As it has turned out, a lot of my time and effort has been devoted to these realities, quite apart from plant systematics per se.

Barbara Murray: When Dave became your graduate student in 1962, you gave me a three-year position to work on lichens. I assisted you in the Herbarium primarily making microscope slides for taxonomic use and preparing numerous sets of your exsiccata. As did Dave, I also picked up your scientific values and standards. And you and Sammy welcomed us into your family on holidays and other occasions. Before my experiences with you, I had no taxonomic training at all. When I left Boulder my interest was strong, and I was able to teach myself about lichens and bryophytes while at institutions with no programs for their study. You and Bill Steere were my mentors. Some 20-odd years after I left you, Dale Vitt enabled me to study for a Ph.D. at the University of Alberta.

Thanks from both of us for the excellent foundation! David & Barbara Murray

SECOND EDITION OF THE HITCHCOCK & CRONQUIST, FLORA OF THE PACIFIC NORTHWEST

On November 13, the University of Washington released the second edition of Hitchcock & Cronquist's Flora of the Pacific Northwest. This completely revised and updated edition captures the advances in vascular plant systematics over the decades since publication of the first edition. These advances, together with significant changes in plant nomenclature, the description of taxa new to science from the region, and the recent documentation of new native and nonnative species in the Pacific Northwest required a thorough revision of this authoritative work.

Flora of the Pacific Northwest covers all of Washington, the northern half of Oregon, Idaho north of the Snake River Plain, the mountainous portion of western Montana, and the southern portion of British Columbia. It accounts for the wild-growing native and introduced vascular plants falling within those boundaries.

Many larger genera were split into the smaller ones and the arrangement of the families follows the most recent linear sequence decided by the International Association of Plant Taxonomists. I bet this arrangement will become obsolete before we will get used to it. (Something similar happened with the second edition of the CA Jepson Manual.) Many thanks to our WA colleagues for this great work!

9TH ANNUAL WILF SCHOFIELD BRYOPHYTE AND LICHEN FORAY

The 9th Annual Wilf Schofield Bryophyte and Lichen Foray was held on Haida Gwaii from June 18-21, 2018, just prior to Botany BC. This year's meeting was highly anticipated not only because several species found on Haida Gwaii occur nowhere else in Canada, but because the archipelago was so dear to Wilf Schofield. During 16 field seasons from 1964-2002 he collected and deposited more than 11,000 specimens from approximately 250 sites in the University of British Columbia Herbarium; the specimens underpin several important publications including the discovery of the endemic moss Seligeria careyana (Vitt & Schofield 1976) which is known from only three sites; the first report of Daltonia splachnoides from North America (Welch 1972); and several bryogeographical analyses (Schofield 1965, 1976, 1988, & 1989; Schofield & Crum 1972). Golumbia and Bartier (2004) reviewed the distribution and ecological affinities of the bryophytes of Haida Gwaii based primarily on Schofield's work.

The first fieldtrip of the 2018 Foray was to Takakia Lake—located on Moresby Island in the SGaay Taw Siiwaay K'adjuu Haida Heritage Site / BC Parks Conservancy. The clear, sunny weather was ideal for accessing the lake by floatplane. Among the highlights of the trip was seeing the lake's namesake, Takakia lepidozioides, nestled among shady, moist rock outcrops, and viewing many of the species recorded by Schofield during a five-day trip in July 1964. An uncommon moss not previously known from the site, Tetrodontium brownianum var. ovatum was found by Olivia Lee, Collections Manager of Lichens, Bryophytes, and Fungi at the University of British Columbia.

On the second day of the Foray part of the group was joined by botanists from Botany BC for a boat trip to east Limestone Island hosted by the Laskeek Bay Society. The others visited an old growth riparian forest in the Damaxyaa Heritage Site/Conservancy near Sandspit on Moresby Island.

The final day of the Foray featured an excursion by boat to the old growth Thuja plicata forest of Jiinanga (Government Creek), located on Moresby Island near the western end of Skidegate Inlet. The area had not previously been visited by bryologists, so specimens were collected and will be deposited at the University of British Columbia Herbarium.

During Botany BC, Schofield Foray participants hosted public outreach events in Masset and HlG_aagilda (Skidegate) and visited a shore bog complex on Graham Island with students of Nancy Turner and Kii'iljuus Barbara Wilson's Ethnobotany & Ethnoecology course, which was offered through the Haida Gwaii Higher Education Society. As part of the Gwaii Haanas Speaker Series, Karen Golinski shared some of her adventures of the 2017 field season spent searching for rare bryophytes on Haida Gwaii in support of status reports for COSEWIC (the Committee for the Status of Endangered Species in Canada).

As if the previous week wasn't enough, a few hearty souls spent an additional couple of days on the Islands successfully searching for the rare mosses Paraleptodontium recurvifolium in the Vladimir J. Krajina Ecological Reserve on northwestern Graham Island, and Zygodon gracilis at Moresby Camp.

A full accounting of the Schofield Foray, complete with photos, will be posted on the Beaty Biodiversity Museum Blog: http://beatymuseum.ubc.ca/connect/blog/ The location of the 10th Annual Schofield Foray has not yet been determined by will be announced in an upcoming edition of BEN.

References