The early botanical exploration of Albania (1839-1945)

The botanical exploration of Albania in its modern sense started in the mid-nineteenth century with the collections and publications of A. Grisebach, E. Weiss and C. Grimus von Grimburg, who followed the road from Prizren to Shkoder or were active in the hinterland of the harbours on the Adriatic Sea. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, A. Baldacci, N. Kosanin and I. Dorfler laid the foundations of the floristic knowledge of Albania, focusing their attention on northern Albania and the coastal regions. A considerable amount of collecting was undertaken during the First World War by people commissioned by or active for the foreign powers occupying the country, with the major results published by A. Hayek in Vienna and S. Javorka in Budapest. In the interwar period, F. Markgraf concentrated his floristic research on central Albania, although his work remained uncompleted. Even during the Second World War, collecting and publishing on the flora of Albania did not come to a stop. However, in the mid-twentieth century considerable areas of Albania remained totally unknown botanically, in particular in the southern part of the country. This contribution gives a detailed and critical overview of the botanical exploration of Albania from 1839 until 1945 with emphasis on the collecting routes, the widely scattered herbarium record and the interdependence of field work and the political (and military) situation in the country

Nomenclatural notes on New South Wales flannel flowers (Actinotus spp., Umbelliferae/Apiaceae) and Leopold Trattinnick’s other Australian plant-names

After a thorough consideration of the history of the European collection and subsequent early cultivation of the commercial flannel flower, a lectotype is designated for Actinotus helianthi Labill. (Umbelliferae/Apiaceae) and the earliest publication (by Trattinnick in 1814) of A. minor (Sm.) Tratt. pinpointed. Other neglected names coined by Trattinnick, including generic ones, applied to Australian and other plants, and published on (generally) plagiarised plates, are discussed and disposed of. One such plate is a copy of the iconotype of Amaryllis × johnsoniana Ker Gawl., an earlier epithet for Hippeastrum × johnsonii (Gowen) Herb. (Amaryllidaceae), a bulbous plant long cultivated in Australia and whose name should be conserved with the later spelling. Attention is drawn to confusions in localities on labels attached to specimens of species (in various families) collected on both D’Entrecasteaux’s and Baudin’s voyages to Australia

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements

The discovery, typification and rediscovery of wild emmer wheat, Triticum turgidum subsp. dicoccoides (Poaceae)

Wild emmer, Triticum turgidum subsp. dicoccoides, is an annual tetraploid wheat characterized by a brittle spike axis that spontaneously disintegrates at maturity. It occurs widely in the so-called Fertile Crescent of the Near East and is of great importance for understanding wheat evolution and for breeding modern wheat cultivars tolerant of extreme heat and dryness. Wild emmer was first collected by Theodor Kotschy on Mt Hermon in Lebanon in 1855, but was not found again for more than half a century. Friedrich August Körnicke was first to realize that Kotschy's specimen represented an ancestral form of hexaploid bread wheat, T. aestivum, but, although he gave it a name, he did not describe it. Paul Ascherson and Paul Graebner were the first to provide a description, basing it on information received in a letter from Körnicke. In doing so, they validated Körnicke's suggested name T. sativum var. dicoccoides and made Kotschy's specimen the holotype. Five years later, on the basis of information received from Ascherson and Georg Schweinfurth in Berlin, Aaron Aaronsohn rediscovered wild emmer on Mt Hermon and started to send specimens for further study to Europe. Soon afterwards he also discovered it east of the river Jordan, while Theodor Strauss collected the first specimens in Iran. This paper focuses on the as yet widely unappreciated herbarium record, listing and commenting on early specimens collected in the wild as well as those cultivated in botanical gardens up to 1910

The discovery, naming and typification of Michauxia campanuloides (Campanulaceae) with notes on its introduction into cultivation

Michauxia campanuloides (Campanulaceae) is a biennial to short-lived perennial characterized by white to purple-suffused, deeply lobed corollas with narrow and strongly reflexed corolla lobes. It occurs widely on the eastern fringe of the Mediterranean area in Turkey, Syria, Lebanon and Israel. First collected by Leonhard Rauwolf as early as 1575, it was made known by him through the publication of a description and an illustration. His herbarium specimen, among the first collected in the Near East, survives in Leiden. More than two centuries had to pass until André Michaux and, independently, Jean Jacques Houtou de Labillardière collected M. campanuloides again and made specimens and seeds available to the botanical community in Paris. On the basis of living material, but including references to herbarium specimens, Charles-Louis L'Héritier de Brutelle was the first to provide a binomial for this striking plant. This paper focuses on the widely unappreciated record of herbarium specimens and printed illustrations, and lists and comments on early specimens collected in the wild as well as those cultivated in botanical gardens up to 1800. In addition, the name M. campanuloides is properly lectotypified