Half a century ago my interest in lichens was aroused by the fact that they were referred to as “neglected plants”, particularly in respect of published material. No longer do these fascinating organisms require that label, as testified by the burgeoning output of publications. We are indeed grateful, therefore, to those who patiently review this wealth of material for specific needs. In this particular case, those who are preparing taxonomic monographs and floristic studies are deeply indebted to Peter Scholz for reducing the burden of tracking down biogeographical information, an essential component for such work. In all, 48,330 datasets representing distribution maps of taxa abstracted from 2283 literature sources have been analysed. The 5000 or so lichenized and lichenicolous fungi covered, as well as some doubtful lichenized or non-lichenized species traditionally included in lichenological literature, are cross-referenced to fully cited literature references; these are succinctly annotated to provide a measure of the biogeographical value in terms of number of species mapped (with the names provided where the number is low) and geographical regions covered. It is to be hoped that the present author or a successor will maintain this most useful database, accepting of course that an expanded version would be more universally appreciated and accessible as a web-site. There is just one minor criticism of the current published version, namely the lack of a label on the spine.

The author is to be heartily congratulated on this monumental endeavour.