I have received a notice that a new, expanded edition of Riedemann & Aldunate's "Flora nativa de valor ornamental: Zona Sur y Austral" is in press and prepublication orders are being solicited at the following address, where you can request the full prospectus: [email protected] The person to contact is named Ian Vivanco. I don't know whether he reads English but probably he can do so. (I hope he doesn't use the online translation program I saw in use in Chile last week!) Like the other volumes in this series, the book is actually two books: A large plant encyclopedia including cultivation tips, and a small "Rutas y senderos" ("roads and trails") guide to good botanizing places.. I already have the first edition for Zona Sur, but this new one adds southern Chilean Patagonia and Tierra del Fuego with their distinctive flora.
The difficulty of getting these valuable books is that payment is required to be sent by electronic bank transfer, which apparently is a common practice within Chile but very tedious and expensive from the USA. It helped us in the past to get a group together to order multiple copies shipped to one US address, and sent on from there. I am,however, too busy to organize that right now. I'm paying for my copy with Chilean pesos, of which I got a surplus during the trip from which I've just returned especially for buying books. Three friends and I used the Zona Norte volume constantly during the above-mentioned trip and were able to see amd photograph hundreds of fascinating species in flower after a rare wet year in the Atacama region. It was sometimes a little difficult to identify just the right canyon to walk up, I think because the roads had been improved so the kilometer readings were a little different than when the book was written, but we eventually tracked down most of them and found, for instance, every species of Rhodophiala in the north. It was truly the "mar de flores" the authors describe. No seed, so don't write in excitement -- wait to order it this winter from Chileflora. For those who don't want to read about any plant that grows below the tree line (well, there is no tree line in the Atacama), there is a volume on the Andean zone in this series. Jane McGary Portland, Oregon, USA _______________________________________________ Alpine-l mailing list [email protected] http://mailman.science.uu.nl/mailman/listinfo/alpine-l
