BOOK REVIEW 



Lichen Flora of the United States 1 



The long anticipated posthumous publication of Professor 

 Bruce M. Fink's "The Lichen Flora of the United States," 

 completed by Mrs. Joyce Hedrick Jones, research assistant at 

 the University of Michigan Herbarium, provides a valuable 

 guide for the increasing number of students of this hitherto 

 neglected department of botany. It is the only American work 

 to cover the entire United States since Professor Edward 

 Tuckerman's "North American Lichens," published in 1882. 



This new Lichen Flora must be a part of the library of every 

 serious student of these fascinating plants. Nevertheless, it does 

 not seem to be the final and authoritative guide to American 

 lichens which we had hoped it might be. It seems to us that it 

 does not take sufficient account of the publications of other 

 American workers, especially on the Cladoniae, to which we 

 have given most attention, and which are most interesting to 

 beginners in this field of botany. It is understood that the com- 

 piler of Prof. Fink's material, left at his death in 1927, was under 

 some restraint on the part of the Department of Botany at the 

 University of Michigan, as to admission of new species, and that 

 only such material of these species as passed through her hands 

 was admitted to the new book. This was a handicap to a com- 

 plete presentation of the Cladoniae, for much of the recent 

 extensive field work, and discovery of forms reported for the 

 first time in North America, and based on determinations by 

 Yainio, Sandstede and other eminent European lichenists, and 

 published in American botanical journals, occurred after Pro- 

 fessor Fink's death. 



The treatment of the Cladoniae is a great improvement over 

 that in the "Lichens of Minnesota," and covers the country 

 much more fully. But it rarely goes beyond the species, and takes 

 little account of varieties, forms and modifications, fixed by 

 Yainio and Sandstede, adopted by the recent American workers. 

 Take some examples: Cladonia papillaria is given without any 

 forms, the differences in structure being given in the description 



1 The Lichen Flora of the United States. Bruce Fink, late Professor of 

 Botany, Miami University, completed for publication by Joyce Hedrick. Uni- 

 versity of Michigan. X plus 426 pages, 46 plates. University of Michigan. 1935. 

 $4.00.' 



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