Book cover photo provided by Diana Bizecki Robson
A book that was years in the making is finally available for all the plant lovers out there to purchase. Dr. Diana Bizecki Robson, Curator of Botany at the Manitoba Museum along with a team of volunteer botanists, have spent many years working on a new Manitoba Flora: A Guide to the Vascular Plants of Manitoba to replace the out-of-date and out-of-print Flora of Manitoba by Homer J. Scoggan that was published in 1957. Several hundred species of vascular plants have been scientifically documented in Manitoba since Scoggan’s book was published, making it an unreliable reference for today’s botanists. Although most of the “missing” species from his book are rather obscure grasses, sedges and aquatic plants, also missing were 13 ferns, 10 orchids, and 2 irises. The lack of an up-to-date, easy-to-use flora was making it difficult for botanists in the province to identify the rarer species for conservation work. It is the Museum’s hope that this new publication will make it easier for students, professional botanists, landowners, ranchers, foresters, gardeners and native plant enthusiasts to identify the diverse vascular plants of the province.
The book just released will be the first of two volumes of the Manitoba Flora. Manitoba Flora: Vol 1 contains a brief history of why plants have the names they do, and an illustrated guide to plant terminology for beginning botanists. As well, Dr. Robson worked with elder Shirli Ewanchuk to prepare a special foreward on Indigenous perspectives of the plant world. Descriptions and identification keys to all of the spore-producing plants (e.g. clubmosses, ferns, horsetails, quillworts, spikemosses and water-clovers), cone-producing plants (e.g. conifers), and flower-producing monocots (e.g. grasses, sedges, rushes, orchids, irises, lilies, etc.) are included. Work on Volume 2, which will contain all the dicots (e.g. broad-leaved woody plants, asters, legumes, roses, etc.), has already begun and will hopefully be published in just a few years. Additional herbarium research is required before this second volume can be completed.
The Manitoba Flora project began over two decades ago when Dr. Robson began reviewing and updating the plants in the Museum’s 50,000+ herbarium to the taxonomy used in the Flora of North America (1993+) publication. Other botanists involved in the specimen review and book preparation include the late Dr. Richard Staniforth, Emeritus Professor from the University of Winnipeg, Dr. Bruce Ford, Emeritus Professor at the University of Manitoba, Jane Curtis, Jennifer Dyson, Carol Hibbert, Jackie Krindle, Karin Newman, Dawn Pond, Diana Sawatsky, Karen Sereda, and Dylan Ziegler. Field research to look for new and historic plant species throughout Manitoba was also conducted as part of this project, largely supported by the Manitoba Museum Foundation. The Museum is extremely grateful for the efforts of all the botanists who worked on this project, and all of the donors, including Nature Manitoba, for helping to cover production costs for the book.
A limited number of soft cover copies of Manitoba Flora: Vol. 1, Spore-producing Plants, Conifers and Monocots, can be purchased directly from the Museum for the low price of $34.99, in person or on-line, through the Manitoba Museum Shop (https://www.manitobamuseumshop.ca/ ). E-books and both soft and hard cover, print-on-demand books can be purchased from certain on-line book stores, including FriesenPress (https://books.friesenpress.com/store), McNally Robinson, Barnes & Noble and Amazon. Royalties from the book will be used to help publish the Manitoba Flora: Volume 2, Dicots.
This project was funded through grants from the Manitoba Museum Legacy Fund, Manitoba Government, the Canadian Botanical Association / L’Association Botanique du Canada Special Project Fund, Nature Manitoba Native Habitat Grant Program, and Helios Hernandez.