Dear Colleagues,

This Christmas we wish you much happiness and love, and we hope you may find the New Year 2015 even more fruitful than you have ever had before. We want to thank you for your continuous contribution to the development of AFE maps; we appreciate that the mapping quality is getting better with every next volume of AFE!

Along with the greetings, we would like to update you on the progress of our mapping.

At present, the work on volume 17 (Sorbus) is nearly finished. The mapping part is complete. There are still some adjustments in the nomenclatural synopsis to be done; we expect to finish the remaining work by the end of this year and to print the volume before the summer of 2015. Further information on the progress wiil be announced at our website.

We are deeply grateful to those who already provided the distribution data for volume 18 (the beginning of Fabaceae). This information is processed and included into the database, but the coverage is still not fully complete. We are waiting for the data from a few countries, of which reminders will be sent separately.

The draft of volume 19 (Astragalus and Oxytropis), together with information on the schedule of data submission, will be distributed by the summer of 2015. We estimate that this volume may be completed by the end of 2016. To be in time with this tough schedule, we hope to start receiving relevant distribution data before the end of 2015.

With kind regards,

Pertti Uotila                                        Arto Kurtto                                          Alexander Sennikov