Book reviews

Hickman, James G., editor. 1993. The Jepson Manual. Higher Plants of California.

(Excerpted from the The Blazing Star, Sept./Oct., 1993.)

Many members of the California Native Plant Society probably do not know much about the past floras of California which have been written, so I thought it might be of interest to describe them briefly. Since 1876 there have been five floras written or at least started which include all of California, and another which includes Washington and Oregon as well. Two additional floras cover southern California. By now there are a large number of local and regional floras and increasingly dozens of check lists for various parts of California.

But first a little history of California since it was "discovered" by Juan Rodriguez Cabrillo, a Portuguese explorer employed by Spain in 1542. From then on ships of many nations sailed along the California coast. Sir Francis Drake did so in 1579, for instance.

It was not until 1791 that a California plant species was formally described; this was Abronia umbellata described by Lamarck. The Roman Catholic missions were established in 1769 and the California population grew significantly reaching, for example, 560,000 in 1870. The Gold Rush began in 1849. The Central Pacific Railroad was completed across the country in 1869.

Botanists from many nations visited California from about 1800 on and by 1853 the California Academy of Sciences was established in San Francisco forming a nucleus of local resident naturalists. Albert Kellogg comes to mind as one of them.

California with its 158,706 square miles, its diversity of scenery, landscapes, plant communities, and now 6,890 species of native and introduced vascular plants, as well as agricultural and other commercial ventures, increasingly attracted new residents and visitors.

So the time was ripe for a State flora. The first flora is usually called The Botany of California. It was published in 1876 by W.H. Brewer, Sereno Watson, and Asa Gray. This was published as a second edition in 1880 with minor corrections along with Volume 2. It was a remarkably good flora and written in the best contemporary style.

In 1909 Willis Linn Jepson of the University of California published the first Part of Volume 1 of his A Flora of California and other Parts of this Volume at various times up to 1922. Volume 2 was published in 1936 and is complete. Volume 3 is incomplete and was published in 1939. Recently, in 1979, Lauramay Dempster published a treatment of the Rubiaceae as Part 2, Volume 4. This work spans 70 years and the older it gets the less useful it becomes.

Dr. LeRoy Abrams of Stanford University published Volume 1 of An Illustrated Flora of the Pacific States, Washington, Oregon, and California in 1923. A second reprint with minor changes was issued in 1940. The last volume, Volume 4, written in large part by Roxana S. Ferris was published on January 21, 1962. Both the Depression and World War II contributed seriously to the long delays in its completion. Abrams' An Illustrated Flora is the only completely illustrated flora for California.

In 1923 and 1925 Jepson published in several parts A Manual of the Flowering Plants of California. It is usually and incorrectly cited as being published in 1925. Jepson should also have known that ferns, fern allies, and gymnosperms are not flowering plants. In effect Jepson stopped work on his A Flora of California and rushed forward with A Manual of the Flowering Plants of California in some sort of irrational competition with Abrams. A Manual of the Flowering Plants of California was a very good work and served as the standard flora for California until 1959. The net result was that California had a one volume manual much earlier than was expected.

Philip A. Munz of the Rancho Santa Ana Botanic Garden in Claremont published A California Flora in 1959 and a lengthy, 224 page supplement in 1968. It might be interesting to note that Munz published A California Flora without any research support and with a relatively small subvention for publication to the University of California Press.

Munz used a phylogenetic system which so far as I know has never been explained in print except for a statement on the inside of the front portion of the dust jacket, "It abandons the conventional family order and attempts to follow that suggested by recent contributions from morphology and phylogeny." Floras are not a place to introduce new phylogenetic systems. In Munz' 1974 A Flora of Southern California he saw the light and arranged the families alphabetically within major groups.

Willis Linn Jepson in his will left a list of work which he hoped would be done, supported by Jepson's endowment to the Jepson Herbarium. About a dozen years ago the late Dr. James C. Hickman and the late Dr. Lawrence R. Heckard, both of the Jepson Herbarium at the University of California, Berkeley, felt that it was time to revise Jepson's A Manual of the Flowering Plants of California, one of the works Jepson had on his list. The history of the plans, fund raising, etc. for the revision are discussed in the front matter of The Jepson Manual. Various committees were formed, botanists throughout the country and beyond were solicited to write treatments of various groups. This led to the publication of the book by the University of California Press in February of 1993.

The book has both good aspects and unfortunate ones.

• The Jepson Manual is well printed, the typography is good, and the illustrations are generally very good, although not every species is illustrated. The binding is relatively sturdy, but if a volume is frequently taken into the field it may not last long.
• The arrangement of families alphabetically within major groups, genera alphabetically within families, and species alphabetically within genera, is easy to use and will save users a lot of time.
• In cases where a species consists of two or more subspecies or varieties each subspecies or variety is clearly circumscribed in separate paragraphs, in addition to a description of the entire species.
• We have to trust the individuals who wrote various sections to produce the best treatment possible, but can we find out what specimens were used and where they are?
• The keys as far as I have used them seem to be effective.
• Most of our maps in this country are in the English system, which I would personally prefer over the metric.
• Rare and endangered status of species is probably going to change considerably. I think it would have been better to use the Inventory of Rare and Endangered Vascular Plants of California published by the California Native Plant Society for this information.
• A name different than The Jepson Manual should have been used. This book is very different from the 1923- 1925 Manual, much of it was not produced by Jepson Herbarium staff, and could not the subtitle have been Vascular Plants of California instead of Higher Plants of California?
• The Jepson Manual has already sold out. Corrections will not be included until the third printing. But The Jepson Globe will publish all errata on a quarterly basis. So join the Friends of the Jepson to keep up with corrections.
• The book is certainly not user-friendly as the quote from Mildred E. Mathias states on the rear dust jacket. I don't think I have ever used a flora in English which is as hard to use and to get used to. To aid me in using this book I have xeroxed pp. 27-48 which contain a lot of the abbreviations.
• Every author that I have talked to has complained about the geographical regions and their abbreviations while writing text. One of the arguments for using so many abbreviations, both in terminology and in geographical terms, is that the book is a manual and had to be kept as short as possible. However when you have a book that weighs six pounds, you don't have a manual format, so why not go to two volumes and remove the constrictions on space?
• I think the editors made a very bad mistake in not using conventional geographic names, both natural (Pajaro River) and political (Alpine County).

Well, we are stuck with a book that cost well over a million dollars to produce and it is not the book it could have been. I guess that we will all learn at least some of the abbreviations, and if we teach, we have much to explain to students.

Meanwhile do not throw away or discard any of your older California floras or your regional and local floras. And remember, The Jepson Manual is not a bible and certainly it is not the last word.

Editor's note: also see Stephen Edwards (Tilden Botanic Garden) Letter to the Editor (March/April 1993).

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An appeal to CNPS members

by Stephen Edwards

The beautiful new Jepson Manual, an immense contribution, is a fitting tribute to the memory of Larry Heckard--such praise is well-deserved.

The book also raises some troublesome issues for conservation biology, and I appeal to CNPS members to reflect on one of them. In its appendix II outlining principles of classification, the book states:

...taxa at all levels...are not real entities....it is helpful in understanding why there is so much change in taxonomy to recognize that taxa are never "real things"--they are simply the best concept we can define at the moment (p.1318)

and

It may seem shocking that there is, in fact, no objective way to decide the rank at which to recognize a taxon--all such decisions are matters of tradition, utility, and taste and not scientific issues (p.1319)

The belief that species do not exist in nature seems to dominate among American plant taxonomists. That is one reason they often say that taxonomy is "more art than science." Many botanical readers will have no trouble at all with the Jepson statements, because these ideas are entrenched in the basic literature of plant taxonomy in the English-speaking world, and by now they read like mother-tongue. However, that does not make them correct. Moreover, the are not the rule in other disciplines of biology. The Manual gives the clear impression that these are settled issues, that species and other taxa simply do not exist. In contrast, biologists world-wide are more deeply concerned than ever to preserve the diversity of living species they perceive not only as real, but as overwhelmingly dynamic, mysterious, beautiful, unique--indeed, incredibly real. The Manual's position is rooted in a 14th century tradition of nominalism which holds that only individuals exist. My contact with California plant taxonomists over two decades has convinced me that many approach taxonomic studies with this conviction already personally settled. The a priori insistence that taxa are only concepts is part of a long, specific, well-defined, special, abstract, and completely unnecessary intellectual tradition that most English-speaking plant taxonomists do not question. According to the taxonomic philosophy announced in the Manual, taxonomists rearranging taxa are only rearranging concepts. It is certainly true that they are rearranging their concepts of the taxa. but those conceptual changes can result in real field entities threatened or lost. Why? Because the concepts arise largely from nature, and changes in taxonomy are interpreted by people in diverse disciplines, and most of the latter perceive a necessary relation (imperfect though it must be) between the concepts and the natural entities. Most people, and most scientists, are looking for classifications that are hypotheses, i.e., scientific endeavors to describe and explain nature as it is.

When taxonomy is portrayed as more art than science, its ability to inform conservation biology is radically limited. In a court of law, when the fate of a threatened species is being deliberated, should we consult the best scientific work available? or should we announce that the endangered entity is not a species but only a concept, and that this is the opinion of the best artists available?

Most practicing plant taxonomists seem to set aside their philosophical preconceptions when the time comes for serious work. They do their level best to create classifications that reflect field biology. That kind of diligent work is essential to science, and more of it is desperately needed. If, however, plant taxonomists continue to fly the banner of art and species-denial, they may well help to marginalize their own discipline.