Subject: BEN # 212

From: Adolf Ceska <[email-masked]>
Date: Wed, 13 Jan 1999 23:17:07 -0800 (PST)

BBBBB    EEEEEE   NN   N             ISSN 1188-603X
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BBBBB    EEEEE    NN N N             BOTANICAL
BB   B   EE       NN  NN             ELECTRONIC
BBBBB    EEEEEE   NN   N             NEWS

No. 212                              January 13, 1999

[email-masked]                Victoria, B.C.
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 Dr. A. Ceska, P.O.Box 8546, Victoria, B.C. Canada V8W 3S2
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            CHESTER PETER (CHESS) LYONS (1915-1998)

[Chess  Lyons  died  in Hawaii on December 20, 1998 of complica-
tions from ruptured gall bladder. The following biography is  an
abbreviated  chapter  from  the  book  on  "Plant Hunters of the
Pacific Northwest" which is being edited and prepared for publi-
cation by Arthur R.  Kruckeberg.  The  author  of  Chess  Lyons'
biography is Steve Cannings. Additional information was provided
by Bill Merilees, Nanaimo, B.C. Many thanks for their permission
to post these excerpts on BEN. - AC]

Chester  P.  Lyons  is probably best known for his popular field
guides on the plants of British Columbia and  Washington  State.
These  books  have  appeared  in several editions since 1952 and
have been used by a wide range of  outdoor  people  as  well  as
students and professionals.

"Chess"  was born in 1915 near Regina, Saskatchewan and moved in
1919 to Penticton in the Okanagan  Valley  of  British  Columbia
where  his  parents  began  fruit farming. He attended Penticton
schools and despite his inclination to skip out  of  school  and
pursue  his  "studies" in the great outdoors, he managed to com-
plete high school without difficulty.

Chess was a  high-spirited  teenager,  very  fond  of  practical
jokes.  Above  all  he  was an all around outdoorsman and a keen
observer of natural history. He took every opportunity  to  hike
and  camp-out  in the hills of the local mountains. On one occa-
sion, Chess was called into the high school principal's office -
which was not too unusual - but  when  he  saw  the  local  game
warden,  he  became  a little apprehensive. It turned out that a
hunter had been lost in the snow-covered hills east of town  and
Chess was needed to help track him down. After an all-day search
Chess returned to report no track crossing the height-of-land. A
few  weeks  later  the missing man was located in California. He
had hopped a freight train and made his  way  south  across  the
U.S. border.

Following  high  school graduation, Chess entered the University
of British Columbia in Vancouver where  he  studied  Forest  En-
gineering, graduating with a Bachelor of Science degree in 1938.
Soon  after graduating from UBC, Chess joined the Forest Service
where he was engaged in surveying, reforestation  and  engineer-
ing. His home base was Victoria where he had resided since 1940.

In  those  days, Provincial Parks came under the jurisdiction of
the Forest Service and Chess soon managed  to  transfer  to  the
Park  Branch  where  he carried out exploration and planning for
new parks. These included Manning, Tweedsmuir,  Wells  Grey  and
Bowron  Lake  Parks.  Near the latter park he also worked on the
restoration of the famous old gold rush town of Barkerville  and
was responsible for the acquisition of many artifacts that bring
such realism to this popular heritage site.

To  pursue his many projects in nature interpretation Chess took
early retirement from the government service.  His  book  "Trees
shrubs  and  flowers  to  know  in British Columbia" (and the US
version  for  the  Washington  State)  became   a   "bible"   to
"naturalists,  Boy Scouts and grandmothers." It has been through
countless editions since it first appeared in 1952, and is still
in print.  His  skills  as  a  plant  illustrator  were  clearly
demonstrated in this book. A completely new and greatly expanded
edition  appeared  in  1995. His other "Milestone" books (Fraser
Canyon, Vancouver Island and Ogopogo Land) introduced  thousands
of  visitors  to  the local and natural history of these popular
areas.

As a film lecturer  on  the  National  Audubon  Society  lecture
circuit  and  the  World  Around  US  travel  series, Chess took
British  Columbia  to  large  audiences  in  hundreds  of  North
American cities. He was also the main contributor to the popular
CBC  series "Klahani - the Great Outdoors." His films brought to
public attention previously unknown areas  and  activities,  in-
cluding hiking the West Coast Trail, the possibility of canoeing
a  circuit  on  the  Bowron Lakes and kayaking around the Broken
Islands in Barkley Sound.

Friends of Chess Lyons will gather on April  11,  1999  2:00  to
4:00  p.m.  at  Freeman-King  Park,  Victoria,  to remember him.
Please feel free to attend.

Authors:

   Steve Cannings, S-9, C-1, R.R. # 3, Penticton, B.C.,
      Canada V2A 7K8
   W.M. Merilees, 3205 Granite Park, Nanaimo, B.C.,
      Canada V9T 3C8

BOTANY BC + BOT WA 1999 - MARK YOUR CALENDARS

Botanists  and  plant  enthusiasts  from  British  Columbia  and
Washington  State will meet at a joint BOTANY BC + BotWA meeting
at Cedar Beach Resort on Saltspring Island. The activities  will
start  on  Thursday April 29 (late afternoon) and end on Sunday,
May 2, 1999. We will explore the Gulf Islands' rich spring flora
with local experts by day and have interesting  talks  and  tom-
foolery  by night. Look for details and registration forms in an
upcoming issue of BEN, and mark those days!

ST HELENA BOXWOOD - NOT EXTINCT AFTER ALL!
From: Press release, Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh
       http://www.rbge.org.uk/news/boxwood.htm

Unseen for over 100 years, the unique St Helena Boxwood, Mellis-
sia begoniifolia (Roxb.) Hook.f. (Solanaceae), has  been  redis-
covered by local hiker Stedson Stroud, and taken for identifica-
tion  to  St  Helena's Conservation Officer, Dr. Rebecca Cairns-
Wicks.

According to Dr. Quentin Cronk  (RBGE),  British  island  of  St
Helena  has  the  world's most threatened flora with over 40% of
its plants listed in the "IUCN Red List of  Threatened  Plants,"
including the  St Helena boxwood  (Mellissia begoniifolia) which 
is listed as extinct. 

The 862-page "IUCN Red List of Threatened Plants"  is  the first
world list of threatened plants. You can find it at:

   http://www.wcmc.org.uk/species/plants/plant_redlist.html

Just one living St Helena Boxwood was  found  amongst  six  dead
bushes on a sea-facing slope 100 m above sea level. The plant is
suffering  from  an  attack of mealy bugs and moth larvae and is
unlikely to survive. It is indeed fortuitous that the plant  was
rediscovered  just  in  time while it was in flower and seeding,
giving the chance for propagation material to be collected.

"So, now we wait in hope that the seeds germinate and  the  cut-
tings  root  as  this  is  the  only known plant, which could be
easily lost to drought or pests. If this happens and propagation
is unsuccessful then we will be calling St  Helena  boxwood  ex-
tinct  -  this  time forever," says Dr. Rebecca Cairns-Wicks, St
Helena Project Manager.

RE: OLD-GROWTH FORESTS (BEN # 211)
From: Townsley_John_J/[email-masked]

I found the estimates of "old growth" to  be  very  interesting.
Recent  work  in Eastern Washington suggests that the percentage
of the landscape that was  pre-settlement  in  an  "old  growth"
structure  was  perhaps quite different. Ann Camp who did inten-
sively sampled the 76,000 acre Swak  watershed  of  the  central
eastern Cascade Mountains, found that only a small percentage of
the  landscape  was  in  a  late successional condition prior to
settlement (Camp, A.E. 1995. Predicting  late-successional  fire
refugia  from  physiography  and topography. Ph.D. Dissertation.
University of Washington, Seattle, Washington). Dick  Schellhaas
(in  press)  of  the  Wenatchee  Forestry Sciences Lab has found
following intensive sampling of two  watersheds  located  within
the   Yakima  and  Entiat  River  Drainages  that  typical  pre-
settlement fire return periods were on the  order  of  6  to  10
years.  In  highly  dissected  terrain  he  found no statistical
difference  between  the  return  period  for  north  and  south
aspects. He also found that since the onset of fire suppression,
fire return periods have increased in length by a factor of ten.

In  Eastern  Washington  we  have  relatively few lodgepole pine
stands that survive past 120 years (the age  used  by  MacKinnon
and  Vold  to  define  lodgepole  pine  old  growth). In fact we
believe that prior to settlement, fire from the low lands  often
came  up the drainages and reset the biological clock with great
regularity.

It would be very interesting for MacKinnon and Vold  to  discuss
the  underlying  ecological reasons for such high percentages of
'old growth' forest  in  B.C.  landscapes.  Is  it  because  the
climatic  conditions  seldom  favor  stand replacing fire? Is it
because there are few stand replacing events caused by  epidemic
insect  or  disease? How do the topographical characteristics of
B.C. landscapes differ from  the  landscapes  found  in  Eastern
Washington  where  research  has  found  disturbance  a frequent
visitor? Is it because they sampled existing vegetation, and not
pre-settlement  vegetation,  and  therefore  have   masked   the
profound influences of pre-settlement disturbance regimes?

INDEX TO AMERICAN BOTANICAL LITERATURE ON LINE
From: "Barbara M. Thiers" <[email-masked]>, originally posted
          on TAXACOM <[email-masked]>

The New York Botanical Garden web site now includes a searchable
version of entries in the Index to American Botanical Literature
at: 
    http://www.nybg.org/bsci/iabl.html

The  Index to American Botanical Literature has provided a serv-
ice to the American botanical  community  for  over  a  century,
published initially in the Bulletin of the Torrey Botanical Club
and  subsequently  in  Brittonia.  The  Index  is  compiled from
resources of The LuEsther T.  Mertz  Library  of  The  New  York
Botanical  Garden  and  contains  entries  dealing  with various
aspects of extant and fossil American plants and fungi,  includ-
ing  systematics  (traditional  and  molecular)  and floristics,
morphology, and ecology, as well as economic botany and  general
botany (publications dealing with botanists, herbaria, etc.).

The  searchable database includes all those entries published in
the Index since 1996, and  thus  includes  botanical  literature
appearing  since late 1995. The database is updated on a regular
basis. Retroactive indexing of previously published  entries  is
envisioned.
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