Sad news about Dr Alexandra Berkutenko

[Susann]

Dear Friends; I just got very sad news from a friend in Magadan, Russia. Dr Alexandra Berkutenko passed away 29 September. As many of us know she was ill for a while but recovered. This is not only a tragical loss of a person but it also means that we lost the possibility to buy interesting wild collected seeds from her list.
In February we lost another important botanist in Russian Far East, Dr Alexander Galanin.

[Maggi Young]

 
Dr Alexandra Berkutenko

Susann, this is indeed sad news.  I know so many people have had great seed from Dr Berkutenko over the years and who held her in high esteem.  I never had the occasion to know her  or Dr Galinin but I well appreciate the loss of these  characters.

[Stephenb]

Very sad indeed Alexandra was also an ethnobotanist and published a nice little book (sadly only in Russian) “Medicinal and Edible Plants of Alaska and the Russian Far East”: Just a week ago I wrote a little piece entitled "ALEXANDER BERKUTENKO AND THE GIANT EDIMENTALS OF THE RUSSIAN FAR EAST" on my blog:
http://www.edimentals.com/blog/?p=208
She is mentioned and is acknowledged in my book (published this month) for helping me get access to seed of hard to get perennial edibles from her region, notably Aster scaber (picture). She also helped me a lot with information on foraging traditions in her area...sadly, she will never see this appreciation...

[Yann]

She published a super monography "They bloom on Kamchatka
volcanoes"

This is the first illustrated book dedicated to the flora of three of the most well known Kamchatka volcanoes: Avachinskyi, Korjakskyi, and Mutnovskyi. An annotated list of their vascular plants consists of 299 species. For each species, the ecology and abundance are given; for most of the species, the altitudinal limits of growing under the specific conditions of volcanism are given. A separate table comparing the occurrence of species on the three volcanoes is represented, as well as some data on the altitudinal limits of plant distribution on Kozelskyi volcano. More than one-third of the species are illustrated in color photos taken on the volcanoes. These photos are designed to show species occurring in alpine and subalpine belts, and also in the forest belts in the foothills of the volcanoes. Distribution of these species in the Russian Far East is shown on dotted maps. Photos of some of the volcanoes are given.
This book is addressed to botanists, geographers, ecologists, teachers, students, and all travelers who are either already familiar with Kamchatka or are just being introduced to this unique region.

Here's the last list i got from her
 Seed list 2013alphabet.pdf (41.5 kB - downloaded 216 times.)