Welcome to Burmanniaceae.org. This website is dedicated to our research on the fascinating members of the plant family Burmanniaceae: tiny and extremely rare beauties of the tropical rain-forests. Our mission is to discover and understand these poorly known plants and learn more about their evolutionary relationships.

home > get involved

Help us collect Burmanniaceae

You can help us a great deal by photographing and collecting Burmanniaceae species (or presumed Burmanniaceae species) encountered on expeditions or field trips. Here are some guidelines which we advice to follow.

1. Take your time to observe these rare plants. Maybe you can spot some pollinators inside the flowers? If you have a camera with you don't forget to take pictures. Later, these can provide useful information for identification.

2. If enough specimens are present, we would encourage you to collect some plants for our research. In order to preserve the DNA, put a few plants in a ziplock bag or tube with silica gel immediately after collection. Make sure only specimens of the same species are put in the same bag or tube and try to avoid contamination from grasses etc. You can obtain silica gel in grocery stores or by contacting us.

3. The specimens on silica gel will dry out quickly and become useless for later identification. Therefore a complete flowering voucher specimen should be collected. This specimen will represent the morphological characters which are lost in the silica dried DNA material. The voucher specimen is processed as a traditional herbarium specimen (dried between newspapers). In some cases, however, Burmanniaceae can be rather fleshy (e.g. Thismia, Afrothismia, Campylosiphon) and difficult to get dry. The voucher specimen for such species should be put on alcohol (ethanol 70%).

4. Don't forget to label all tubes/ziplock bags properly. Apart from the species name (if your able to identify the species immediately) and a collection number, try to include a precise location with GPS coordinates if possible, date, etc.

5. Take a good look around. Different species of myco-heterotrophic plants can often be found at the same spot.

6. Send the samples to:
Laboratory of Plant Systematics
Institute of Botany and Microbiology, K.U.Leuven
Kasteelpark Arenberg 31
B-3001 Leuven
Belgium

Usually there is no need for a special permit to send dried plant material. Write 'Herbarium Samples For Scientific Study - No Commercial Value' on the outside of the box. We are glad to reimburse mailing costs.

Some history

In 1753 Linnaeus described the genus Burmannia, with two distinct species: Burmannia disticha from Sri Lanka and Burmannia biflora from the USA. He named this new genus after Prof. J. Burman, a medical doctor and professor at the Botanical Garden of Amsterdam. More than 70 years later, Blume united Burmannia with the genera Gymnosiphon and Gonyanthes (now Burmannia) in a new family, Burmanniaceae.

Since Linnaeus' description expeditions all over the world brought new and sometimes very strange species from the dark hearts of the tropical and sub-tropical rain-forests. As a result Burmannianiceae now comprise more than 130 different species across 13 genera and new discoveries are made almost every year.

Endangered treasures

As members of the endangered tropical rain-forests of the world, extinction is a constant threat for most Burmanniaceae. Protection of their natural habitats is essential for their conservation: Due to their complex and little known association with mycorrhizal fungi it is impossible to grow the plants in greenhouses. The continuous exploitation of tropical forests already made victims. Thismia lauriana, to give just one example, was found in Borneo in 1995 between the roots of large tree. Only two hours after its discovery, the tree and the surrounding forest was lodged and another species was lost forever...

New techniques reveal new affinities

With respect to systematic relationships, Burmanniaceae were traditionally placed within the orders Orchidales or Liliales. In recent molecular analyses, however, Burmanniaceae are sister to the Dioscoreaceae (the yam family). Together with the Nartheciaceae these three families now form the order Dioscoreales.

Support

Vincent Merckx holds a personal grant for this project from the Institute for the Promotion of Innovation through Science and Technology in Flanders (IWT Vlaanderen, no. 31536). Peter Schols is a postdoctoral fellow of the K.U.Leuven (PDM/04/136).