Sketches of the Vegetation of Some Southern Provinces of Soviet Russia
1931; Wiley; Volume: 19; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/2255826
ISSN1365-2745
Autores Tópico(s)Bryophyte Studies and Records
ResumoKNOWLEDGE of plant life in the southern countries of the Union of Soviet Socialistic Republics' is accessible to the outside world in the form of several classical Russian and German works, but these are none too familiar, and they leave some interesting territory untouched. Furthermore, Russian taxonomists and ecologists have been very active since the Revolution and have brought together many new facts. It seems, therefore, worth while to present, in English, an account of the flora of certain southern Soviet provinces, and thereby bring together some of the newer researches now scattered in relatively inaccessible journals, to which are added a few original observations of my own. I had the pleasure, in the summer and fall of 1929, of leisurely journeying from the Crimea to within 100 miles of the Chinese border in Turkestan. The present paper is the first of a series in which the botanical results of this excursion are described. The regions visited were the Crimean Mountains, the Georgian Military Way (North Caucasus), the Bakuriani Basin (Minor Caucasus), the desert at Repetek (Kara Kum), and the Transilian Mountain range of Kazakstan (eastern Turkestan). My sojourn in these southern states of the Soviet Union was made in company with a number of Russian botanists who either travelled with me for a time or resided in the places where I stopped. I am indebted to them all and I shall express my appreciation in these articles; but to certain of these companions special thanks are due. I am grateful to Prof. N. A. Maximov who gave to my stay in Russia the necessary official backing; to Mrs Tatiana Krasnosselsky Maximova, who, with characteristic initiative and energy, helped our expedition through many trying experiences, and who has since effectively obtained for me much information necessary to the satisfactory completion of these articles; and to Prof. Venedict Kolesnikov who was my companion in the Crimea and North Caucasus. I am also grateful to Dr Forrest Shreve, of Tucson, Arizona, for his courtesy in reading the manuscripts of these articles, and to Mr Paul Bausch for kindly making a number of drawings, including Fig. 3 of the present article.
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