Iris family book/Goldblatt and Manning
Mary Sue Ittner (Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:19:25 PST)

Hi,

I ordered The Iris Family: Natural History and Classification by Peter
Goldblatt and John C. Manning when Timber Press had their discount sale and
free shipping even though it wasn't published yet. It arrived about a week
ago and I wanted all of you who are interested in such things to know that
it is now available. As they say in the preface "taxonomy is truly an
unending synthesis, and this volume is just one more step in that
process." So this isn't the end of the changes, but they hope this book
will be a new baseline. They have set the number of genera at 66 and the
species at around 2025. Some genera have been combined and some new ones
introduced. Here is a summary:

subfamily Isophysidoideae -- Isophysis

subfamily Patersonioideae -- Patersonia

subfamily Geosiridoideae -- Geosiris

subfamily Aristeoideae -- Aristea

subfamily Nivenioideae -- Nivienia, Klattia, Witsenia

subfamily Crocoideae, broken into five tribes which I won't list --
Tritoniopsis, Cyanixia, Zygotritonia, Savannosiphon, Lapeirousia,
Pillansia, Thereianthus, Micranthus, Watsonia, Gladiolus, Melasphaerula,
Crocosmia, Devia, Freesia, Xenoscapa, Radinosiphon, Romulea, Afrocrocus,
Syringodea, Crocus, Geissorhiza, Hesperantha, Babiana, Chasmanthe,
Sparaxis, Duthieastrum, Tritonia, Ixia, Dierama

subfamily Iridoideae broken into five tribes which I won't list --
Diplarrena, Iris, Dietes, Bobartia, Ferraria, Moraea, Libertia,
Orthrosanthus, Olsynium, Sisyrinchium, Solenomelus, Tapeinia, Trimezia,
Pseudotrimezia, Neomarica, Alophia, Calydorea, Cipura, Cobana, Cypella,
Eleutherine, Ennealophus, Gelasine, Herbertia, Hesperoxiphion, Larentia,
Mastigostyla, Nemastylis, Salpingostylis, Tigridia

Hopefully I've spelled those all correctly. They have keys for
Nivenioideae, Crocoideae, and Iridoideae which must have been quite an
undertaking. This isn't a gardening book, but a natural history and
classification book as the title explains. There are some nice color photos
in the middle, but as would be expected from the background of the authors
these are weighted towards South African species.

We don't have illustrations of or even descriptions of many of these
genera on the wiki although Lee Poulsen added some of them to the
Photographs and Information table awaiting someone to make a page for them.
I suppose eventually we'll get some of the cross references added for those
genera that have departed like Rigidella (now in Tigridia). Anyone who has
the book and wants to write about the genera in the Iris family that have a
? next to them in the table based on this information is welcome to do so.
I'm always amused when someone comments with surprise that something isn't
on the wiki that they think should be. It takes a volunteer who wants to
share the information with others and who is willing to take the time to
add it.

Mary Sue