Helsinki, 21 December 2016

Dear Colleagues,

We wish you a merry Christmas and a happy New Year from Finland, the true homeland of Santa Claus. Although winters are no longer as snowy here as they used to be in the times of our childhood, our winter patron still visits us and we sing our special AFE Christmas carols to celebrate this event.

In 2016 we have got quite much progress in the outstanding volume 17 with Sorbus s. lato (Rosaceae). The nomenclature and partly taxonomy of European taxa have been resolved, on which six contributions (AFE Notes) dealing with Sorbus in Hungary, Slovakia and Norway have been published in peer-reviewed periodicals (Annales Botanici Fennici, Nordic Journal of Botany, Phytotaxa, Taxon) during this year. Now we are prepared to finalise this volume with publication during the first half of 2017.

Volume 18 (Fabaceae: Cercis to Calophaca) is in good progress, with the distribution data almost complete. If time permits, the volume may be completed and published by the end of 2017.

Meanwhile we started the work on the next volume 19, covering Astragalus and Oxytropis (Fabaceae). Its draft text will be available during the first half of 2017. Astragalus alpinus, a remarkable plant widely present in the Finnish north and east, is a new gem of our traditional Christmas card.

It is not only climate that changes, any establishment or project cannot remain static forever. In 2017 we are planning to gradually broaden the coverage, in order to include treatments of particular territories to be mapped “out-of-order”. This change will also allow future updates to the maps, making them live.

We would like to thank our contributors and collaborators for their hard work on treating and mapping the difficult taxa of Rosaceae and Fabaceae.

With kind regards,

Pertti Uotila                                         Arto Kurtto                                           Alexander Sennikov