Francis Hallé in Marimurtra and the second volume of Marimurtra Collections on conifers and other gymnosperms are the titles published this 2024
Edicions de Marimurtra, the publishing label linked to the Carl Faust Foundation, owner and manager of the Marimurtra Botanic Garden, publishes the second volume of the botanical collection with a work dedicated to conifers and other gymnosperms. Conifers are trees with narrow or scale-shaped leaves, with rudimentary flowers, and with the particularity that their ovules and pollen are exposed, without any protection. Unlike angiosperms in which the seed is often covered inside the fruit.
Gymnosperms are plants that do not bear fruit, and reproduce through fertilization with the pollen of male specimens in the ovules of female specimens. Its seeds develop on the surface of scales or leaves, and are often modified to form cones.
This volume aims to show particularities of conifers and other gymnosperms, their importance in the environment and the species that we can see in the Marimurtra Botanical Garden. The intention is to highlight this group of woody plants, which, despite not being important in Mediterranean climates, are important because they make up the landscape and ethnobotany.
The book provides abundant photographic material with the aim of facilitating the location and identification of the conifers that can be seen during the visit to Marimurtra. But it has also had the graphic support of UrbanSketchers from Lloret de Mar, who, following a couple of visits to Marimurtra, created a series of illustrations that have given the book a very remarkable graphic and artistic added value.
The author of the work is Pere Fraga i Arguimbau, botanist and gardening specialist. Currently botanic curator and head of research at the Marimurtra Botanical Garden. For 22 years he has been working in the management of plant species in danger of extinction and in the control of their threats such as invasive exotic species EEI.
The other book is Francis Hallé in Marimurtra, a book that aims to allow the visitor to complement and remember his experience in the Garden with the help of some of the most outstanding specimens by the botanist illustrator Francis Hallé. For this reason, the magnificent illustrations of this work are also accompanied by the description of the types of arboreal architecture that is related to it, a location within the Garden and a comment that helps the visitor and explorer of Marimurtra to discover these forms and structures in the Botanical Garden in a fun and interesting way.
The authors of the book are Francis Hallé, a French botanist, ecologist and explorer born in 1938. He is known for his work in plant ecology and tropical biology, and has devoted many years to the study of primary forests and biodiversity; and Carles Burguera, botanist and curator of the herbarium and germplasm bank of the Marimurtra Botanical Garden. Responsible for carrying out a line of research on the recovery, restoration and study of botanical collections and promotes scientific dissemination.
Both publications have had the support of the Diputació de Girona.
