A Festschrift in honor of Professor Adam Boratyński – forester, botanist, and traveller

Professor Adam Boratyński is a forester and botanist by education. He graduated from the Faculty of Forestry at the Poznań University of Life Sciences (previously, the August Cieszkowski Agricultural University of Poznań). Presently, he is a senior professor, very active as a researcher and educator and with great organizational skills. He is also an author and co-author of many scientific articles, monographs, atlases and chapters in the books that are of significant importance for the world’s scientific literature. Trees and shrubs in the scientific life of Professor Boratynski are the focus of his research. The professor, apart from scientific articles, is the author of monographic studies of various tree species in the encyclopedia ‘Enzyclopädie der Holzgewächse’. Professor Boratyński is a friend of many botanists, especially young people. He always has time for conversations with them about science and life in general and is very interested in their problems, both scientific and connected with everyday life. He inspires young people to create different alternative hypotheses and search for and use various tools and technologies to solve research problems. Professor Boratyński has been continually developing his research techniques. He is one of the first Polish botanists to apply genetic analyses to solve phytogeographical problems and formed a team of young people, who presently develop high level research in the area of phylogeography, based on molecular techniques. Professor Boratyński is also a passionate traveller, who uses travels for nature observation and collecting material for studies in plant systematics, chorology and ecology. Among Professor’s favourite research regions are the Mediterranean Basin and Sudeten Mountains (Figs 1–2). The Mediterranean Sea (mediterraneus from Latin – inland or in the middle of the land) significantly affects the climate and vegetation of surrounding areas. It is vegetation of this region, particularly the dendroflora of Greece, Spain and some Mediterranean islands, which has been in the center of Professor’s scientific interests. In this place, it is worth recalling the work on dendroflora of Greece or the monograph of Empetraceae on the Iberian Peninsula, written in cooperation with his Spanish colleagues from the Botanical Institute of Barcelona. The Sudetes are the second special place for Professor Boratyński. The dendroflora of Karkonosze Mountains, the highest range of the Sudetes, was the study object of his habilitation thesis. No doubt, the biology and ecology of common yew (Taxus baccata) and many other trees were investigated in depth thanks to the Professor’s research. The current issue of the journal Plant and Fungus Systematics is dedicated to Professor Adam Boratyński. On behalf of the journal’s editors and Polish botanists, we wish to thank Professor Boratyński for his passionate research work, for all past and future discussions about nature and science and, above all, for his great kindness for people and peacefulness – both features so rarely met nowadays. We thank all the authors for their contributions to this issue, which is published to express our heartfelt appreciation of Professor Adam Boratyński. You will find information about the scientific works of Prof. Boratyński: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-0678-4304; https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Adam-Boratynski.