Davidsonia

Davidsonia - A Journal of Botanical Garden Science

Editor, Iain Taylor writes about changes in the publication of Davidsonia - due to rising costs, publication of the Journal is now done in house.

It has been 25 years since renowned ecologist and botanist Arthur Kruckeberg first introduced, within the pages of Davidsonia, the ultramafic (serpentine) soil habitats of British Columbia. In what was likely the first article of its kind on BC serpentines, Kruckeberg described the harsh realities of ultramafic soils faced by plant life. These included an adverse chemical and physical soil environment, and the myriad forms of botanical response to this “serpentine effect” (ecotypic differentiation, speciation, exclusion, indifference, heavy metal hyper-accumulation, etc.) that give rise to a host of unique ecologies. He also outlined his and other workers’ botanical and ecological observations from various BC ultramafic sites and compared them to the well-known ultramafic sites of Oregon and California thereby placing them in a western North American ultramafic context.

This will not be a tale about plants with reptilian affinities, despite its title! Nor is it about an herbaceous border along a sinuous path. It is a story about a curious affinity of certain plants for a most demanding habitat - the magnesium-rich soils derived from serpentine and other ultramafic rock. The only allusion to snakes is the rather fanciful likeness of the lustrous, mottled green serpentine rock to the pattern of a snake’s skin. But first, I must put this exceptional union of plant and soil in its proper global setting.

The December installment of Judy Newton's popular series describing what to see at the UBC Botanical Garden each month of the year.

The Editors of Davidsonia highlight some of the most interesting and important titles from the thousands of recently published papers in the plant sciences.