A book that the botanical world has been waiting for for a long time - an illustrated monograph on the flora of Tajikistan and adjacent areas by a team of botanists who have taken part in research expeditions in Central Asia over the past 15 years, led by Prof. Dr. Arkadiusz Nowak and Dr. Marcin Nobis, Prof. of the Jagiellonian University, has been published in recent days.

"Illustrated Flora of Tajikistan and Adjacent Areas" is a unique work of exceptional cognitive, popularization and educational value. On almost 800 pages, a synthesis of Tajikistan's syntaxonomic diversity is presented for the first time, with 150 plant communities new to science described over the past decade. The main part of the work is a plant catalog of 1,864 species in more than 4,000 photographs, including some 700 endemics.

Last Saturday, the authors ceremoniously presented the first copies to the people - institutions that had the greatest influence on its creation. "Illustrated Flora of Tajikistan and Adjacent Areas" was received by the President of the Polish Academy of Sciences Prof. Dr. Jerzy Duszyński, Vice President of the Polish Academy of Sciences Prof. Dr. Romuald Zabielski, who particularly supported the creation of this work, the Dean of the Faculty of Biology at Jagiellonian University Dr. Joanna Zalewska-Gałosz, Prof. UJ, and the President of the Polish Botanical Society Prof. Anna Mikuła. The University of Opole also contributed to the publication.

The event "Botanists in the land of tulips" was attended by many distinguished guests. In addition to those mentioned above and the research team of a dozen or so, there were also representatives of Opole University, including the director of the Institute of Biology Dr. Miłosz Mazur, Warsaw University - including the director of the Institute of Botany Dr. Małgorzata Suska-Malawska, Wroclaw University and the Botanical Garden in Wojsławice Dr. Małgorzata Gębala and Dr. Grzegorz Swach. Present were the chairman of the Scientific Council of the PAS Botanical Garden, Prof. Jerzy Puchalski, PhD, and Council member Eleonora Gabryszewska, PhD, Prof. IO.

The event was accompanied by lectures by the authors of the monograph and Igor Strojecki - great-grandson of Leon Barszczewski - naturalist and traveler, who in the 19th century. "blazed the trail" in Central Asia for contemporary botanists, the screening of the film "The Botanist", the laying of flowers on the grave of Leon Barszczewski at the Powazki Cemetery and the ceremonial opening of an open-air exhibition of photographs taken by members of the research team "In the land of tulips" showing the beauty and diversity of Central Asia, whose steppes and herbs are the home of tulips. It is there that about 50 species of these beautiful plants are found in the wild, which, together with goldenseal and other endemic species, constitute one of the most important assets of one of the world's most valuable areas of biodiversity - the mountains of Central Asia.

On the 40 boards we can admire an unusually rich mosaic of earth colors, shapes of rock formations, ribbons of rivers and streams, crevices of ravines, dunes and screes, also people, whole villages and social surroundings. In turn, a dozen of them juxtapose contemporary photos taken by botanists with photographs taken 150 years ago by the traveler Leon Barszczewski, who wandered the trails of central Asia, collecting plants, exploring glaciers, searching for mineral deposits and capturing "the lost world" in photographs, as his great-grandson Igor Strojecki wrote about these places.

But is it really lost? Our researchers are proving that Tajikistan, Uzbekistan or Pakistan are places where there is still much to be discovered, not only in matters of vegetation. It would certainly be extremely interesting to undertake research on the functioning of indigenous peoples, who need to be made aware of the threat to the species they use on a daily basis - but these are topics for another group of researchers - ethnographers and ethnobotanists.

Botanists in the land of tulips

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2020-11-05 17:01:25