Kaszab Zoltán (szerk.): A Magyar Természettudományi Múzeum évkönyve 66. (Budapest 1974)

Szujkó-Lacza, J.: Possibilities and problems of the electronic data process of flowering plant herbarium specimens

oned disciplines, because they need more specimens from identical species populations for their examinations, and it is important for them to repeat sample takings in more than one time point. Collection of herbs for various purposes as nutrition, building, clothing or perhaps for therapeutics has begun in a time unknown so far. Collections have generally been performed with a practical aim. In the course of this experiences have accumulated with regard to favourableness or unfavourableness of some characteristics of certain plants. It is perphaps due to similar reasons that the problem of identification has come into the foreground of interest. The interdependence of identical content, form and (idea) nomination is known to have been very excellently solved by LINNÉ (1735, resp. 1753), namely in such a way that by considering the recurrence — or lack in the keys of determination — of morphological properties and grouping these in hierarchic order, he established his plant system and the binomial nomenclature. His work was based — beyond the scientific systematic activities of his predecessors -— on a considerable collection, the information content of which made it possible to establish the LINNÉ system. (Since then considerable efforts have been made and outstandind results have come to light which helped the systematics more exactly depict the natural system of flora. Of these the following ones are best known : CRONQUIST, BENTHAM & HOOKER, ENGLER, HUTCHINSON, TACHTADZHIAN (conf. BECKER 1973), and the phylogenetic systems which came to light in Hungary following Soós's (1964—1973) activities). LINNÉ'S successful life-work has greatly contributed to the increasing of the already existing collections and also urged to establish new ones in more than one country. In the latter case the augmentation of the collections was dominated by two main view-points in the function of the available financial possibilities as 1. to obtain specimens of the species described by LINNÉ and the systematics following him, 2. to collect species representing artificial or natural units of geographical areas. In this way have collections developed, which were arranged according to systematic views and beyond this according to the aspects of geography, plant geography, vegetation history. (These two main endeavours have not excluded the possibility that within the system also rarities -— species with special interest from the viewpoints of taxonomy, vegetation-history, or else — occur in much greater number — in the number of herbarium sheets at least — than f.i. the most numerous species). Coordination of the aspects of taxomomy and geography has contributed to the discovery of new species resp. taxons of greater value and to the discovering of area floras. A need to collect plants in the reproductive stadium characterized both objectives, with regard to the fact, that one time the characteristic features of the taxon were observed by taxonomists to replicate in the generative organs, which was a basic condition in the identification and determination. Recently several taxonomists have also extended their spheres of examination on other organs of the plant (in Hungary f.i. BORHIDI & ISÉPY 1966, ÚJHELYI 1962—1972). The above outlined practices of collection and collection-augmentation have remained valid also in the 20th century (conf. HORANSZKY 1969). In spite ofthat, however the newly arisen and developing new fields of science which have remained or became related to herbarium material, have extended the former principles of collecting with new ones, or at least have re- formulated their demands. This was done f.i. by SOPER & PERRING in 1967. According to him the value of collections for science and technics largely depends from the quality of the species •— method of conservation — exactness of determination and also whether the geographical distribution and the natural variability of the species are truly represented or not.