The botanical legacy of Mihael Dimonie (1870–1935), an almost forgotten plant collector in the southern Balkan Peninsula before the First World War

Clemens Pachschwöll,Kit Tan,Dieter Reich

doi:10.3372/wi.49.49213

Abstract

An up-to-date biography of Mihael Dimonie (1870–1935), an important Aromanian plant collector in the southern Balkan Peninsula, is presented. So far, he has been better known to linguists than to botanists on account of the Codex Dimonie and his contributions to Aromanian cultural heritage. His private herbarium collections were destroyed in two separate fires in 1917 and 1944, and only the numerous vouchers belonging to the Plantae Macedonicae series that had been commercially distributed remain. These specimens are available in several European and American herbaria and are a lasting testament to Dimonie's extensive collecting activities in what are today Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and North Macedonia. His collecting localities in the southern Balkans are indicated in a map. Seven names based on material collected by Dimonie and one based on material collected by Ignaz Dorfler are lectotypified and nomenclatural notes for six other taxa are presented. A preliminary list of taxa described (or partly described) from Dimonie's material includes at least 29 names.

Highlights

Mihael Dimonie collected in the European part of the Ottoman Empire and distributed plant material to several important European herbaria as a series of exsiccata bearing the label “Dimonie, Plantae Macedonicae” (Greuter 1975; Karagiannakidou & Raus 1996)
The herbarium vouchers of Dimonie’s Plantae Macedo nicae series, collected in present-day Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and North Macedonia, can be found in the following herbaria [important collections partly kept separate are in parentheses, herbarium codes are according to Thiers (2019+)]: B
Dimonie often used Ottoman toponyms difficult to locate nowadays, e.g. Cara-tach, Gül-tepe, Keci-kaja, Kerici-köj, Nisi-dagi. The fact that he distributed his vouchers in a series named Plantae Macedonicae increased the confusion in later literature and in herbarium databases

Summary

Annals of the Botanic Garden and Botanical Museum Berlin

The botanical legacy of Mihael Dimonie (1870 – 1935), an almost forgotten plant collector in the southern Balkan Peninsula before the First World War. Abstract: An up-to-date biography of Mihael Dimonie (1870 – 1935), an important Aromanian plant collector in the southern Balkan Peninsula, is presented He has been better known to linguists than to botanists on account of the Codex Dimonie and his contributions to Aromanian cultural heritage. His private herbarium collections were destroyed in two separate fires in 1917 and 1944, and only the numerous vouchers belonging to the Plantae Mace donicae series that had been commercially distributed remain These specimens are available in several European and American herbaria and are a lasting testament to Dimonie’s extensive collecting activities in what are today Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and North Macedonia.

Introduction

MK GR