Horst Mehlhorn
Quick Flora Mallorca
Your small wildflower guide for your holidays
© 2021 Horst Mehlhorn
Translation from the German language edition:
Quick Flora Mallorca
by Horst Mehlhorn
Copyright © Springer-Verlag GmbH Deutschland, a part of Springer Nature 2020. All rights reserved.
Cover design, illustrations, fotos, translation: Horst Mehlhorn
Publisher: tredition, Hamburg, Germany
ISBN 978-3-347-28955-0 (paperback)
ISBN 978-3-347-28956-7 (hardcover)
ISBN 978-3-347-28957-4 (ebook)
This work, including its parts, is subject to copyright. Any exploitation is prohibited without the consent of the publisher and the author. This applies in particular to electronic or other reproduction, translation, distribution and making available to the public.
Contents
Preface
Introduction on how to use this book
Suggestions for walks in the field
Usage of the identification table
Glossary
Table 1 (1-20)
Leaves entire / leaves opposite
Table 2 (21-40)
Leaves entire / leaves not opposite
Table 3 (41-60)
Table 4 (61-80)
Table 5 (81-100)
Leaves not entire / leaves opposite
Table 6 (101-120)
Table 7 (121-140)
Leaves not entire / leaves not opposite
Table 8 (141-160)
Table 9 (161-180)
Table 10 (181-200)
Literature
Index
Preface
Mallorca and the other Balearic Islands rank among the most popular holiday destinations within Europe. While most travel guides mention the beauty of the vegetation on the islands, they are of little help when it comes to wanting to know the names of the plants. While such literature exists, these books are either out of print, only available in Spanish or Catalan, too time-consuming to use in the field, or simply too big and heavy to take along when going on holiday. This provided the motivation to begin to write this book. Unlike other plant identification books available today, it should
• be small and low in weight for easy transport,
• use no more that ten steps to identify most plants,
• contain more than 1,400 species that can be found on the islands,
• include photographs of many of the plants found on the islands,
• use colloquial terms wherever possible to allow users without specialist knowledge to use the book.
For this purpose, I have developed a novel, multidimensional key. This is based on 4 characteristics with 256 theoretically possible combinations. It enables users to identify the page within the book where an unknown wildflower species can be identified without even opening the book! On that page, the plants can then be determined with only a few additional steps. When using the book on a smartphone, tablet or PC, hyperlinks allow users to jump directly to the quoted page number without tedious scrolling, as in conventional nature guides.
The selection of the species has been based on the works by Beckett (1988, 1993) and Gil and Llorens (1993). While many trees and shrubs could be included, grasses and ferns had to be omitted for space reasons.
I hope you will enjoy using this book and I will be grateful for any suggestions and corrections that will help me improve the content of this book.
| Essen, March 28, 2021 | Horst Mehlhorn [email protected] |
Introduction on how to use this book
Throughout this book, four main criteria are used to group all plants: the (1) colour and (2) shape of the flowers, the (3) position of leaves on the stem, and the (4) type of leaf margin. Except for a few exceptions, usage of only these four criteria permits the identification of most species on one double page in less than 10 steps.
Colour
In this book the plants are distinguished according to the following colours: white, pink, red, blue, yellow, green, multicoloured and other. Many species have been assigned several times. This was necessary as colours often have transitions that are difficult to grasp, and as the perception of colours differs from person to person.
Flower type
Flowers differ not only in colour but also in shape and they were grouped in the following way: (1) flowers that are too small to see flower details without a magnifying glass, (2) flowers with 2-4 radially symmetrical petals, (3) flowers with 5 radially symmetrical petals, (4) flowers with more than 5 radially symmetric petals, (5) flowers with umbelliferous inflorescences, (6) flowers with a non-radial symmetry axis, (7) daisy- and dandelion-like inflorescences and flowers which do not fit into any of the preceding criteria.
Leaves
In addition to flowers, plants also differ in their leaves. These can be opposite (8) or not opposite (9).
The criteria not opposite (9) also include plants without leaves as well as plants where leaves are either all basal or in whorls.
Leaf edge
Apart from the leaf position, leaves also differ in their leaf margin. The leaf margin can be entire (10) or not (11). Similar to the position of leaves, plants without leaves are grouped with those plants that do not have entire margins.
Other criteria
Apart from these four main criteria, other important distinguishing features for the identifcation of plants include the shape of the leaves,
the presence (23) or absence (24) of leaf stalks,
The presence (25) or absence (26) of stipules,
and various flower parts (27):
Families of plants with special characteristics for identifying plants In some plant families, other characteristics are also of importance during the identification process. Thus, the colour and size of the petals are important for the identification of Fabaceae (28) species,
Typical flower shape of Fabaceae species (28)
the