Hybridization and Introgression
The study of natural hybridization using secondary metabolites, particularly flavonoids, attracted a good deal of attention following the pioneering work of Ralph Alston and his colleagues at the University of Texas. Sorting out the complex patterns in po
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Springer-Verlag Wien GmbH
Prof. Dr. Bruce A . Böhm Botany Department, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada
Univ.-Prof. Dr. Tod F. Stuessy Department of Higher Plant Systematics and Evolution, Botanical Garden, Institute of Botany, University of Vienna, Vienna, Austria
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© 2001 Springer-Verlag Wein Originally published by Springer-Verlag Wein New York in 2001 Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2001 Typesetting: Composition & Design Services, Minsk, Belarus
Printed on acid-free and chlorine-free bleached paper SPIN: 10758972
With 56 Figures
CIP-data applied for
I S B N 978-3-7091-7245-2 D O I 10.1007/978-3-7091-6181-4
I S B N 978-3-7091-6181-4 (eBook)
This book is dedicated to: Arthur Cronquist (1919-1992) Outstanding plant systematist and major contributor to understanding taxonomic relationships within Asteraceae and Ralph E. Alston (1925-1967) Visionary natural products chemist and geneticist who pioneered the use of chemical data in studies of plant systematics and evolution
Preface Certainly many of the readers of this book will remember the early developments of chemosystematics in the late 1950s. We ourselves remember the excitement of these new data bearing on plant interrelationships. The hopes were high, the techniques were rapidly evolving, the quantities of data were large, and young workers were eagerly enthusiastic. Some even went so far as to predict that chemical data would soon replace morphological information as the basis for plant classification. These overly zealous predictions did not materialize, of course, as the history of plant systematics has amply shown during the past two centuries. If there is any distinct characteristic of systematics it is synthesis, as Lincoln Constance (1964) called it, the "unending synthesis." New tools generate new data and provide insights on additional dimensions of plant relationships. This will never change-we will continue to discover new tools and new data in the years ahead, and they will continue to be incorporated into the predictive general reference system of classification. The earlier efforts in chemosystematics focused on secondary plant products: alkaloids, betacyanins, carbohydrates, cyanogenic glycosides, glucosinolates, lipids, terpenoids, and especialiy flavonoids. The latter were particularly well suited for chemosystematic investigation for several reasons: ease of isolation and characterization, small amounts of plant material needed for analysis, stability of compounds especially through routine preparation of herbarium specimens, and low cost to obtain useful information. As a result of these considerable advantages, literally thousands of studies on use of flavonoids in plant systematics have been published. Although now w
