8vo. viii, 612 pp., +xxxviii, index, Hard Back binding, spine cloth with marbled boards, slightly rubbed round edges, title gilt on spine, speckled edges, library stamp on front fly leaf, otherwise copy in very good condition, Typis Jos. Jelinek, Brunae, 1909.

Synopsis

The work is an enumeration of critical vascular plants, which marches in the Haemus Peninsula [the Balkan Peninsula] and Asia Minor (Bithynia), gathered up Dr. Ed. Formánek and edited by Karel Vandas.
Eduard Fermanek (d. 1900) was professor in the grammar school (Gymnasium) in Brno, present day Czech Republic. He published an important botanical contribution, “Flora of Moravia and Austrian Silesia”. He travelled extensively throughout the Balkan Peninsula, due to his profession mostly during the summer vacations. Herbarium Formánek contains ca. 40 000 specimens; it is deposited in the herbarium of the Moravian Land
Museum in Brno. This work by Karel Vandas is a complete catalogue of the plants, with a critical revision of the identifications. When it was published,
Romuald Formánek wrote a booklet to defend his brother Prof. Dr. Edvard Formánek. There, he accused Vandas of tarnishing the memory of E. Formánek by criticizing his determination of plants. Vandas was forced to explain in a separate booklet why he changed some of Formánek´s erroneous identifications. The Bulgarian findings of Formánek were also hugely ignored by Josef Velenovský, the author of Flora Bulgarica partly because Formánek´s determinations were so unreliable. Edvard Formánek is buried in Dafni on the Athos peninsula in Greece. Besides other plants, a large and
beautiful bellflower was named in his honour, Campanula formanekiana Degen & Dörfler.
VANDAS, Karel 1861 – 1923, was assistant to Prof. Čelakovský at the Department of Botany in the National Museum in Prague. In 1906 he became professor at the Technical University in Brno and, until 1909, Director of the Department of Botany of the Moravian Land Museum. During the period between 1887 and 1923 he travelled extensively in Bulgaria, Macedonia, Kosovo (1914), Bosnia and Hercegovina. According to unconfirmed reports, he was shot to death by an unknown assailant in 1923 during a quarrel over a Macedonian woman.
Vandas bought the herbarium of Freyn, which had a large amount of type material, for the Moravian Museum. In this work, he carefully revised the large herbarium of Formánek, sacrificing five whole years of his life. He described several new species from the Balkans, e.g., Dianthus freynii Vandas. Some other species bear his name – Dianthus vandasii Velen and Achillea vandasii Velen. The personal herbarium of Vandas is very large and comprises ca. 80 000 specimens. The greater part is deposited at PR with a smaller part in BRNU. [Phytologia Balcania 16 (2): 215 – 220 Sofia, 2010].