W. John Kress

North Carolina · connectedBorn 1951

American botanist and curator

Studied at Duke University

botanist, curator, geneticist, explorer

Quotations with a citation

Heliconias are native primarily in the American tropics from the Tropic of Cancer in Central Mexico to the Tropic of Capricorn in South America, including the Caribbean. A curious disjunct group of six species of Heliconia separated by thousands of miles from most other species is found in the Old World tropics (Kress, 1985, 1990a). The center of diversity of the genus is found along the northern Andes (Colombia and Ecuador) extending into southern Central America (Panama and Costa Rica; Andersson, 1989). Most species inhabit moist or wet regions, but some are found in seasonally dry areas. Although heliconias attain their most luxuriant vegetative growth in the humid lowland tropics at elevations below 500 meters, the greatest numbers of species (many locally endemic) are found in middle-elevation (800-1,500 meters) rain and cloud forest habitats. Few species occur above 2000 meters.

Epiphytic taxa are reported for all but two major divisions of extant vascular plants ... No epiphytes have been reported in the Ginkophyta or the Coniferophyta. Ten percent of all vascular plant species (23,466 species) are epiphytic. ... The angiosperms account for the great majority of epiphytic taxa at all hierarchical levels. ... The gymnosperms are depauperate in epiphytes: only 0.5% of the species are epiphytes.

Recorded without a firm citation

Kept here, labelled, rather than mixed in above.

The majority of species, genera, and families of flowering plants are found in the tropical regions of the Earth. Therefore it is no surprise that the greatest diversity of flower morphologies and plant-pollinator interactions are also present in the tropics. Endress has amassed a splendid display of examples and illustrations of this tremendous diversity. ... ... There are many references to the classic works of Sprengel, Knuth, and Müller, as well as many lesser known but important European workers of the nineteenth century.

A major task for any plant systematist, field ecologist, evolutionary biologist, conservationist, or applied forensic specialist is to determine the correct identification of a plant sample in a rapid, repeatable, and reliable fashion. “DNA barcodes,” i.e., standardized short sequences of DNA between 400 and 800 base pairs long that in theory can be easily isolated and characterized for all species of plant on the planet, were originally conceived to facilitate this task (Hebert et al., 2003). By combining the strengths of molecular genetics, sequencing technologies, and bioinformatics, DNA barcodes offer a quick and accurate means to recognize previously known, described, and named species and to retrieving information about them. This tool also has the potential to speed the discovery of the thousands of plant species yet to be named, especially in tropical biomes (Cowan et al., 2006).