This proposal requests salary subvention for three academic staff members involved in the critical step of editing manuscripts and certain other final costs of preparing The Jepson Manual: Vascular Plants of California. The Jepson Manual is a comprehensive, authoritative, concise, accessible, and up-to-date treatment of the botanically richest region in the United States (ca. 7,800 infrageneric taxa, or at least a quarter of the higher plant taxa of North America outside Mexico). It has been in preparation for eight years and now involves 180 contributing authors and a staff of seven; it will be published by the end of 1992. The Jepson Manual Project is of national significance because of its role in stimulating systematic research, its close relationship to the Flora of North America Project, the richness and complex relationships of Californian plant taxa (many of which are endemic or endangered), and its development and use of several new kinds of information. The single, reasonable priced volume is designed as a bridge between the developers and dispensers of systematic information (systematic botanists) and the highly diverse, potential users of that information.
