Dear Colleagues,

due to the current climatic anomaly that melted the snow away in southern Finland, Santa Claus cannot attend our office to send Christmas greetings. On his behalf, we wish you a pleasant and happy New Year 2020 – should the New Year be warm or cold, let it remain fruitful but not too much overstressing. 

Thank you greatly much for the distributional data and critical comments on various groups of Fabaceae to be mapped in Atlas Florae Europaeae. The forthcoming volume (18, Fabaceae: Cercis to Calophaca) is to be published soon. We expect it to be printed in spring of 2020. 

The next volume (19, Fabaceae: Astragalus to Erophaca) is nearly complete now. We aim at finalizing it by the end of 2020. 

The text of volume 20 (Fabaceae: Glycyrrhiza to Pisum) can be completed and distributed for comments and mapping in 2021. 

Fabaceae is a tricky family because quite many of its species have been cultivated or became weedy. We kindly ask you to process the distributional data critically; for cultivated and alien plants, only truly naturalized populations are to be mapped. 

The golden wreath of Genista tinctoria is our symbol for 2020, and the feature of our traditional Christmas Card. We wish you a Merry Christmas and a ray of golden sunlight to break the murky beauty of winter darkness. 

With kind regards,

Pertti Uotila                          Arto Kurtto                            Alexander Sennikov