Re: Drosophyllum

SCHLAUER@chemie.uni-wuerzburg.de
Thu, 20 Jun 1996 17:18:19

Dear Nigel,

> but my principal textbook places Drosophyllum only in the southern
> half of mainland Iberia, not even making it to the Balearics or the
> Canaries.

Your textbook is right in excluding the Balearic is. (too
eumediterranean climate) and Canary is. (which are in fact rater
remote from the Gibraltar Strait if compared to Morocco which
defines the S border of it). Yor book is wrong if it omits Portugal
and Morocco, however, and I would only with reservation call it a
"principal" source in this case.

> However, I have an older and less reliable book that suggests
> Drosophyllum occasionally hops across the Straits of Gibralter into
> North Africa!

At least in this respect it is reliable, and perhaps you should
reclassify your books a bit.

> By the way, it sounds from the conversation about U Olivacea that the
> US Federal Authorities and the ICPS ought to join up and bring this
> species into protective custody, otherwise it is in grave danger of
> lapsing into extinction.

Not really. The range of this tiny species is rather large, and the
occasions on which it has been overlooked certainly outnumbers the
cases in which it has been found by several hundred times. This
species is rarely noticed but not really rare. Unfortunately, too
many species have already been brought into "protective" custody by
law on the basis of such partial knowledge and hearsay, while other
species went extinct (or nearly so) without anyone noticing it.

Kind regards
Jan