WELCOME NOTE

Issue 71: From the Editors

Leonardo Borges (Universidade Federal de São Carlos, Brazil) & Stephen Boatwright (University of the Western Cape, South Africa)

with contributions by Brian du Preez (University of Cape Town, South Africa) & Marcus Falcão (Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro, Brazil)

This new issue celebrates the 50th anniversary of the Bean Bag!

The origin of the newsletter goes back to an informal meeting betwen legume systematists attending the First International Congress of Systematics and Evolutionary Biology (ICSEB), held in 1973 at the University of Colorado, US. Two years later, in May 1975, the first printed issue, edited by Charles (Bob) Gunn and Richard Cowan, and distributed around the world.

As the first pages of that volume show (see below), the aim of the annual newsletter is to share news on publications, events, projects, opportunities, requests and other information of intereste to “legume-lovers of the world”.

50 years later, Issue 71 of the Bean Bag keeps faithful to that goal and continues to highlight the efforts of the legume community to push the limits of our knowledge on the diversity, ecology, evolution and systematics of this beautiful family.

This year’s Bean Bag includes reports from the Legume Phylogeny Working Group, six announcements, two digests of 2024 legume papers written by postgraduate students, portraits of three leguminologists in the Gallery of Leguminologists, a spotlight on one botanical artist, new legume species highlights from 2024, a photo gallery and the annual compilation of legume literature in the 2024 bibliography. To pay homage to our origins, this year’s cover reinstates the more straight-forward subtitle of the first edition: “Current Research on Legumes”.

A big thank you to everybody involved in assembling the Gallery of Leguminologists —a very interesting window into the lives of fellow leguminologists— and to Colin Hughes for taking care of the Artist spotlight and the New Legume Species. We also thank Carole Sinou for assistance with posting the Bean Bag to the Legume Data Portal; Gwilym Lewis at Kew for reviewing parts of this issue and facilitating the archiving of the Bean Bag in the Kew Research Repository, and to our many contributors for sharing their time and insights.

Finaly, thanks also to you, the legume community as a whole. Over the past 50 year, you’ve kept a bright light pointing to new ways to study the beautiful family we all love. Without your efforts, highlighted in the continuous growth of each year’s legume bibliography, there would be no news for us to share.

To read more recent BB issues, visit the Legume Data Portal.

A complete list of issues of the BB (since 1975 are available via the Kew Research Repository.

To receive new volume notifications and eventual information of interest to the legume community, join the BB email group and don’t forget to keep an eye on the Legume Data Portal, which also posts news items of interest to the legume community.

Wiborgiella sessilifolia (Crotalarieae) from South Africa

Cover image: Paloue speciosa (Ducke) Redden (Detarioideae), a rare amazonian species of small trees with dark red bracteoles, sepals and petals, three developed stamens and small staminodes. Photo: Marcus J. A. Falcão.

Introductory pages of the first issue of the Bean Bag. Read the full issue at the Kew Research Repository