The Genus Betula: A Taxonomic Revision of Birches
We are pleased to announce the publication of ‘The Genus Betula: A Taxonomic Revision of Birches', which is coauthored by Hugh McAllister, Honorary Lecturer at IIB along with Kenneth Ashburner. As monographs tend to take a very long time, this represents a lifetime achievement for Hugh to produce a book which may remain the standard reference work for many years. The book is a digest of all that is known about birches today, with references to the original sources of all the information presented; from traditional descriptions of the species with keys to their identification, what is known of the fossil record together with a review of recent molecular work and what this tells us about the evolution of birches and how they achieved their present distributions around the Northern Hemisphere. Just as the writing was nearing completion, news came out that a team at Queen Mary University of London have sequenced the complete genome of the dwarf arctic birch, Betula nana, a relatively rare native of Teesdale and the Highlands of Scotland. These researchers are extending their work to all birches and making extensive use of the authors’ collections, especially those at Ness – because they can be sure of the correct naming and precise sources of the material used. This is exactly the kind of work which Hugh and Kenneth hoped would be stimulated by the existence of the basic outline of suggested relationships which our book provides.
Hugh McAllister graduated in Botany from Glasgow University in 1966 and gained a PhD in cytotaxonomy in 1972. For twenty years he was Deputy Director of the University of Liverpool Botanic Garden (Ness) until 1997 when he became a lecturer in the School of Biological Sciences until his retirement in 2010.