Seedlings of Barro Colorado Island and the Neotropics

Author(s): Carol C. Baskin

Source: Systematic Botany, 35(1):220A-220A. 2010.
Published By: The American Society of Plant Taxonomists
URL: http://www.bioone.org/doi/full/10.1600/036364410790862452

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Systematic Botany (2010), 35(1): p. 220A

Copyright 2010 by the American Society of Plant Taxonomists

Book Reviews
Seedlings of Barro Colorado Island and the Neotropics by Nancy C. Garwood
with Margaret Tebbs (Illustrator). 2009. 656 pp. ISBN 978-0-8014-4753-2.
$99.95 (hbk). Comstock Publishing Associates, Cornell University Press,
Ithaca, New York.
Seedlings are an essential part of sexual reproduction of seed plants,
and ecologists have long recognized their important role in ecosystem,
community, and population dynamics (Leck et al. 2008). However, monitoring the emergence, establishment, growth, and survival of seedlings
frequently is difficult due to the problem of seedling identification (ID),
especially of young seedlings. One way to cope with the dilemma of seedling ID is to collect seeds of all the species growing in the plant community
being studied, sow the seeds and thus learn how to recognize the seedlings as they pass from the cotyledon to later stages of development. A second way to deal with seedling ID is to ask an experienced person who has
been working in the plant community and who already has a lot of knowledge about how to ID the seedlings. In the case of the seedlings found on
the forest floor on Barro Colorado Island (BCI) in Panama, the person to
ask is Dr. Nancy C. Garwood. She has been interested in the ID of the seedlings on BCI since her graduate school days in the 1970s, and has accumulated a wealth of knowledge/experience about them. Fortunately for the
scientific community, her long-awaited book on seedlings of BCI and the
Neotropics has now been published.
The focus of Seedlings is on species, including trees, shrubs, lianas,
vines, and herbs that mostly germinate on the forest floor at BCI, but some
species from the forest marginal flora and examples of epiphytes and parasites are included to add breadth at the family level. The book includes
seedling information for 856 species from BCI and/or adjacent central
Panama; 821 species are covered by the keys and information for 35 species was available from the literature. This book deals with the logistics
of acquiring accurate knowledge about the ID of seedlings, and how the
author expanded her work at BCI to cover many of the plant families in
the Neotropics. The final product is not only a comprehensive guide to
seedling ID but also a compilation of information on seedling morphology at the family level.
In Chapter 2, Dr. Garwood describes the various steps involved in collecting information about seedlings on BCI, and discusses the problems
of making sure the ID of seedlings is correct. She emphasizes that there
are various levels of reliability of information with regard to seedling ID.
The most reliable information is obtained when seeds and voucher specimens are collected from a seed-bearing plant. Then, the seeds are sown
and the resulting seedlings are observed over a period of time, during
which voucher specimens of seedlings in various stages of growth are

made. This chapter could be used as a primer on how to make a seedling ID guide for other places.
One of the objectives of the book was to present the taxonomic and
phylogenetic community with new data on seedling traits, and in this
regard the quality and quantity of information on seedling morphology
presented in the book is a major achievement. In Chapter 4, the reader
discovers a multitude of seedling characters, involving every visible part
of the seedlings and at different stages of early growth. These characters are well described and illustrated, and one is immediately impressed
with the observational skills of the author. All the careful attention to
morphological traits allows for construction of keys (Chapter 6) to the
family and then to the genus, and often to the species. To accompany the
keys, there are 255 plates of Margaret Tebbs wonderful line drawings,
illustrating the seedlings of 775 species. Clearly, the artist also has a keen
eye for detail, and the author and artist worked closely with each other.
That is, one can look at the drawings and clearly see the characters mentioned in the keys.
Another important objective of the book was a comprehensive review
of seedlings throughout the Neotropics. The author pulled together seedling information from the literature and combined it with her own knowledge, and then she wrote a description/summary of seedling traits for 229
of the 256 plant families occurring in the Neotropics (Chapter 5). Thus,
the book is highly valuable for people needing to ID seedlings anywhere
in the Neotropics. Further, since many of these families also occur in the
Old World tropics, here also people working with seedlings now have an
excellent source of information. It is fascinating to realize that if one learns
to see the correct characters, it is possible to ID seedlings of tropical
species, at least to family, no matter where you work. Of course, some of
these families also occur in temperate regions. Thus, Seedlings gives us a
firm foundation for a systemic approach to seedling ID, at least at the family level, that could be applied anywhere in the world.
I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the ID of seedlings, especially people specializing in the reproduction of native tropical
species. It should be in the library of all institutions dealing with plant
research in the tropics.
Carol C. Baskin, Department of Biology and Department of Plant and Soil
Sciences, University of Kentucky, Lexington, Kentucky, 40506 U. S. A.
Literature Cited
Leck M. A., V. T. Parker, and R. L. Simpson (eds.). 2008. Seedling Ecology
and Evolution. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

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