Davidsonia

Davidsonia - A Journal of Botanical Garden Science

Editor Iain Taylor writes about the difficulties local scholars in developing countries have, getting their research published in scientific journals or accessing reports from the developed world on issues concerning their home countries.

In June 2001, six magnificent totem poles representing six ancient villages of the Haida now living at Skidegate, carved by Haida Master Carvers and their assistants, were raised at the site of Qay’llnagaay (“Sea-Lion Town”) on Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands). These poles represent the Iitllgaay (Hereditary Chiefs) who have potlatched their names and positions, excluding SGang Gwaay. The pole-raising, including feasting and celebration by thousands of people over several days, was the first phase in the realization of a 40-year-old dream for the Haida: the development of the Qay’llnagaay Heritage Centre and Lodge as a means of preserving and sharing their history, lives and aspirations with children, community members and visitors to Haida Gwaii.

My second visit to northern Vietnam, with Brian White (Capilano College), Scott Back, (BC Provincial Parks Service), and Sarah Wharton extended relationships between UBC Botanical Garden and Lao Cai Province and the Hoang Lien National Park (HLNP) Authority. Our purpose was to train local park employees in management and biodiversity conservation and continue our botanical surveys in the Hoang Lien Son National Park. Our hosts, Hanoi Open University (HOU), provided translators and technical support for our presentations and field trips within HLNP. Mr. Nguyen Quoc Tri, Director of the HLNP, ensured efficient organization and facilitated field trips. Topas Adventure, a tour-guiding company in Sapa, provided top-rate guides and porters.

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

An index to authors, titles, illustrations and key words for Davidsonia, Volume 16.

Davidsonia - A Journal of Botanical Garden Science

Editor Iain Taylor writes about the shift in botanical science to genetic based research and notes the importance of preserving a natural history based ecological view to to fully understand issues of biodiversity.

Vancouver is known for its street trees, but particularly its flowering cherries. Like Victoria, Seattle and Portland, Vancouver boasts an excellent climate for growing a wide variety of ornamentals. The majority of its street trees are the result of extensive plantings made during Vancouver’s boom years following the Second World War, but the Vancouver Park Board has been maintaining Vancouver’s street trees since 1917. Few cities can boast boulevard tree plantings on every residential street, let alone grassy boulevards between curb and sidewalk in every neighbourhood. However, Vancouver’s park planners strove to provide that and the streetscapes created by long, linear plantings of single kinds of trees were often exceptionally beautiful. By the 1960s, the Park Board and its Street Trees Division had created a vast interlacing gridwork of colour and foliage across the city’s undulating topography. Ornamental cherries were considered ideal candidates for the program as they displayed a wide variety of crown shapes and sizes, flower types and colours, and a long season of bloom.

Life is ‘on the edge’ in the alpine environment. For plants the season for growth is very brief and the temperature at which they can harvest the sun’s radiant energy low. Yet alpine plants do establish and grow. Some of the adaptations or ways by which they adapt are observable to the ramblers of alpine meadows in British Columbia. Moreover some of the adaptations are testable by experimentation.