Reviews

The Rijksherbarium received this finely illustrated book from Mr. Anghelos N. Goulandris, chairman of the Board of Governors of the Goulandris Botanical Museum, Kifissia, Greece. In the accompanying letter Mr. Goulandris wrote that this is the first publication of the recently (1963) founded Museum, an institution which has the object of promoting and assisting plant taxonomic activity and research in Greece. The beautiful botanical paintings were made by Mrs. Niki Goulandris, of Athens. They depict many Greek endemics but also species of a much wider distribution. All illustrations are, however, as the author’s introductory note says, of outstanding native wild flowers, especially collected for this purpose by the late Dr. C. N. Goulimis, who also drew up the text, which afterwards, after his death, was checked over and supplemented or occasionally rewritten by Dr. Steam of the British Museum (Natural History). Descriptions of the depicted species have been omitted with a few exceptions. These descriptions and further data relating to most of the species are to be found in the well-known flora’s by Halacsy, Hayek, and Rechinger. Of species described since the publication of these standard works, the original descriptions have been reproduced in the book, so that, as Dr. Steam writes ‘the present work thus provides a kind of illustrated supplement to these’. From a scientific point of view the value of the book is especially qualified by the number of species not previously depicted in botanical literature, and by the detailed data on the distribution.