ALLIUM 2016

[TheOnionMan]

It is a complete mystery to me, McMark, how anyone ever has time to go to work!

I agree, been wondering about that for four decades
Yet I know people who are bored silly when they're not working, with zero motivating interests; that aspect has been a complete mystery to me.

By the way, to add a pertinent Allium note to this topic, with the maturing of The Plant List (TPL), accurate approximation of species count in a large genus such as Allium is becoming more meaningful. Depending on how one displays the list of species in TPL, there can be a genus summary at the bottom, here's the updated summary for Allium. I've been testing this with recently published species, takes TPL a while to catch up, so there remains a number of valid species names still missing, including Allium dumanii. The genus Allium is about ~1000 taxa.
 

[TheOnionMan]

Exciting news for Allium fans!

On Wed Dec 7th, I received email from Reinhard Fritsch announcing "Today electronically published: A preliminary Revision of Allium subg. Melanocrommyum  in Central Asia (in English, key also in Russian)" The abstract descibes the key features to the monumental taxonomic work.
http://dx.doi.org/10.5447/IPK/2016/60

Alternate link to the abstract:
https://doi.ipk-gatersleben.de/DOI/3a44112c-340e-442e-ac65-720ee85c38df/833a14d4-3a8e-4cf9-8a0b-50a40144e490/2

There is a download link to 288-page PDF document "A Preliminary Review of Allium subg. Melanocrommyum in Central Asia" by Reinhard M. Fritsch (note: this is different, newer and more geographically expansive, than his other impressive work on Melanocrommyum Allium in Iran). The PDF is cryptically entitled MiasReviewEnd1.pdf, so I recommend renaming the PDF after download to its true title.

I have confirmed from Reinhard that his scholarly tome is free to download and share with others, a spectacular gift to any "student" of the genus Allium.

[olegKon]

Thank you, Mark, for the reference. It has been successfully downloaded

[fermi de Sousa]

Happy Christmas! Right on cue, Allium flavum  tauricum is in bloom, these are in the garden,
cheers
fermi