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550 ... Hawksworth, Editor
Lichen flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region. Vol. 3. Edited by Thomas
H. Nash III, Corinna Gries & Frank Bungartz. 2007. Lichens Unlimited, Arizona
State University, Box 874501, Tempe, AZ 85287-4501, USA. Pp. viii + 567, figs 36, col.
plates 56, maps. ISBN 0-9716759-1-0. Price US $ 49.95, 43 €.
This volume completes this stupendous work, the first volume of which appeared
in 2002 (see Mycotaxon 86: 485-486, 2003) and the second in 2004 (see
Mycotaxon 96: 350-351, 2006). Again it is very much a result of a productive
international co-operation and has involved 47 authors from 15 countries. It
covers the “balance of the microlichens, and the lichenicolous fungi” – actually
38 lichenized genera and four of lichenicolous fungi. In addition, there is further
information on 16 genera covered in the previous volumes where further
species have subsequently been discovered. This volume is especially valuable
as it includes the treatments of some taxonomically difficult and speciose
genera in some of which new species to science have also been discovered: for
example, Acarospora with eight new species, Aspicilia with 19, Buellia with two,
Caloplaca, Opegrapha with three, Usnea with three, and Verrucaria with seven.
There are also numerous new combinations and even a new genus, Romjularia
in Porpidiaceae for the species previously widely known as Psora lurida. In
addition to a few half-tone photographs scattered through the volume, there is
a signature of 56 un-numbered pages comprising excellent colour photographs
of over 220 species – many more than in the previous volumes. These colour
photographs are mainly of species treated in this volume but also include some
not figured in colour in the previous two.
The overall layout naturally follows that of the previous volumes, and brings
the total number of species covered in the three volumes to 1971, of which 1836
are lichenized – about 40 % of all the species known throughout the whole of
North America. This last volume also has some special features: a key to sterile
crustose lichens, a revised key to the cyanobacterial lichens, and a critical
revision of the lichens reported from southern California in the classic treatise
by Hasse published in 1913. There is also a cumulative index covering all three
volumes, a compilation of the new scientific names introduced (which include
186 new species), and an index to where the major keys are found.
Of course there are the odd spelling slips, such as “Sktyella” for “Skytella”
(p. 297), and other minutiae a persnickety reviewer might point out, but these
hardly distract from what is essentially a meticulously and superbly edited
work. That Tom Nash has been able to exert such editorial dragooning to
achieve accounts of such a consistently high standard cannot but be admired.
And to realize his vision with a product that bears such a modest price! It sets
a new standard for regional works on lichens, covering as it does the full range
of lichens and lichenicolous fungi in this vast region. Further, as so many of
species treated occur elsewhere, not only in North America but the Northern
Hemisphere, this trio of volumes is surely something all lichenologists will both