Introduction

Mihael Dimonie collected in the European part of the Ottoman Empire and distributed plant material to several important European herbaria as a series of exsiccata bearing the label “Dimonie, Plantae Macedonicae” (Greuter 1975; Karagiannakidou & Raus 1996). Standard biographical sources such as Taxonomic literature II (TL-2) ( http://www.sil.si.edu/digitalcollections/tl-2/index.cfm), Index of botanists ( http://kiki.huh.harvard.edu/databasesbotanist_index.html) or Index collectorum ( https://www.uni-goettingen.de/en/index-collectorum/186907.html) lack information on him. However, some biographical details have been published in rarely accessed books and journals, which are solely in the Romanian language (Longinescu 1935; Ştefureac 1984, 1986). We therefore decided to present here the first biography of Dimonie in English together with recent information concerning his plant material in European herbaria, as well as lectotypifications and nomenclatural notes for some taxa based on his collections.

Matevski (2009) provided a brief account, referring to “M. M. Dimonie”; Rechinger (1944) and Karagiannakidou & Raus (1996) to “H. M. Dimonie”, but all three sources lack biographical data. Hertel & Schreiber (1988: 300) listed him as “Dimonie, Mihael”, a professor of the Romanian commercial school from Thessaloniki and probably a commercial plant trader. According to Greuter (1975), Dimonie, together with Lujo Adamović, Ignaz Dörfler and Christos Leonis, represents a category of professional plant collector in the Balkan Peninsula, a profession that for economic and political reasons ceased to exist after World War I. For Adamović and Dörfler, comprehensive biographies are available (for Adamović: Jasprica & Kovačić 2001; for Dörfler: Vogt & al. 2018), but not for Dimonie or Leonis.

Biography

Mihael Dimonie came from a well-to-do Aromanian family. He was born in 1870 in the family house in Ohrid (North Macedonia), at that time part of the Vilayet of Monastir in the Ottoman Empire (Longinescu 1935; Ştefureac 1984). After completing primary school in Monastir (present-day Bitola), he obtained a scholarship to attend the prestigious Şcoala Normală Superioară high school in Bucharest (Romania). He enrolled at the Faculty of Sciences, University of Bucharest and graduated in 1894 with a teaching diploma (Ştefureac 1984). Studying in Romania was a common practice for future Aromanian teachers in the second half of the 19^th century (Motta 2011). In Bucharest, Dimonie was one of the last students of Dimitrie (Demetrius) Brândză (1846–1895), a leading botanist and founder of the University Botanical Garden. In 1894, Dimonie returned to what is now North Macedonia and for three years taught natural sciences in a Romanian high school in Bitola (Ştefureac 1984).

In 1889, the German linguist Gustav Weigand, with the help of the two Dimonie brothers Iancu and Mihael, discovered the Codex Dimonie in the Dimonie home in Ohrid (Kahl & Prifti 2016). This collection of 127 sheets of mostly religious texts in early Aromanian language and in Cyrillic script was written by a grand-uncle of the Dimonie brothers at the beginning of the 19^th century (Kahl & Prifti 2016). Due to this important document, the name Dimonie is better known to linguists and historians studying Aromanian heritage than to botanists (Nevaci 2013; Kahl & Prifti 2016).

Dimonie's later interest in medicinal plants may have been influenced by his collaboration with Dimitrie Grecescu (1841–1910), who was a professor of medical botany in Bucharest, and also a physician and phyto-geographer (Văduva-Poenaru 2000). Dimonie's herbarium vouchers collected between 1895 and 1896 were documented by Grecescu (1899) in a paper written in French entitled Plantes de la Macédonie appartenant au Vilayet de Monastir, recueillies par Michel Dimonié. Most of the records originated from the surroundings of Ohrid and Bitola, some from Mt Pelister (= Peristeri) in the Baba Mts (Grecescu 1899). Based on Dimonie's knowledge of the Aromanian language Grecescu (1899) even included several vernacular plant names in the introduction to his work, and Panţu (1906) added several names provided by Mihael and his brother Iancu in his book on Romanian vernacular plant names. In a later publication written in Romanian, Grecescu (1907) listed approximately 900 taxa. Apart from duplicating records from Grecescu (1899), this work included plants from Thessaloniki and material collected by three students of pharmacy, viz. E. Constantinescu, S. Şunda and N. Petrescu.

Throughout his life, Dimonie was torn between a school career, establishing a successful business and collecting plants, the last of these being his real passion (Longinescu 1935). In 1898, Dimonie was a high school teacher in Caracal (Romania), and then taught in a forestry college in Brăneşti (present-day Colegiul Silvic Branesti “Th. Pietraru”) near Bucharest. In 1899, he was appointed professor and principal of the Thessaloniki Commercial High School (Şcoala Comercială din Salonic, École commerciale romaine Salonique), where he stayed until 1912 (see Fig. 1 & 2, depicting his professional visiting card and his handwriting at that time). He started to be a professional plant trader distributing his material as sets of Plantae Macedonicae to important herbaria in Europe such as Vienna, Geneva, Budapest and London (Ştefureac 1986). When the First Balkan War broke out in 1912, he returned to Caracal as professor and, for a time, principal of the Ioniţă Asan high school (present-day Colegiul Naţional “Ioniţă Asan”). For unknown reasons, his private herbarium had remained in Thessaloniki and was stored in a chapel from the beginning of the Balkan wars. This entire collection burnt down during the Great Fire of Thessaloniki in 1917 (Longinescu 1935; Ştefureac 1984). Thus his scientific data compiled during 18 years of study on the Balkan flora was regrettably lost.

Dimonie never went back to North Macedonia or Greece but stayed in Romania until his death (Ştefureac 1984). The portrait (Fig. 3) shows Dimonie during the interwar period in Romania, when his botanical interest shifted from the Balkans to the flora of Oltenia in SW Romania, and to medicinal and economic plants (Ştefureac 1984). On the first topic, he only published minor articles such as the flora of Valea Batovei near Batovo (Dimonie 1934). On the second topic, he wrote a book on medicinal plants (Dimonie 1926), a paper on economic plants of Oltenia (Dimonie 1925a), and numerous articles in newspapers and in the popular science journal Natura, e.g. on medicinal plants such as Viola odorata L. (Dimonie 1919) and “hervea româneascor” (a herbal anti-rheumatic drug) (Dimonie 1934). He also published on insect communication (Dimonie 1925b) and even the production of ice cream (Dimonie 1933). In 1931, he wrote a manuscript entitled Synopsis plantarum Scholae Polytechnicae (Dimonie 1931), a compilation of the herbarium contents in the former botanical laboratory of the Polytechnic School in Bucharest (present-day Politehnica University of Bucharest), where his friend and mentor Nicolae Iacobescu (1863–1931) worked. At least two lithographic copies exist in Bucharest libraries. For this manuscript, he contributed with his own vouchers to “fasc. 1 – Ranunculaceae” (Ştefureac 1984). Only a few vouchers of Ranunculaceae collected after the First Balkan War (1912–1913) have survived in the former Polytechnic School herbarium (Herbarul Şcoalei Politehnicei Bucureşti / Laboratorul botanic). These are now stored in BUCF (Fig. 4), i.e. the Alexandru Beldie herbarium, which is owned by the Marin Drăcea National Institute for Research and Development in Forestry (I.N.C.D.S) and situated in Voluntari near Bucharest (Vasile & al. 2016; Lucian Dinca, pers. comm. 2019). Dimonie had originally planned to prepare his doctorate under Nicolae Iacobescu based on the Balkan plant collections of his youth when he retired. However Iacobescu died in 1931, so this idea could not be further pursued (Longinescu 1935). In 1933, Dimonie retired from teaching but kept up his publication activity for the journal Natura (Longinescu 1935). In his last years, Dimonie, together with an English entrepreneur, established a large-scale business cultivating the fibre plant “ghiara pisicei“, i.e. Abutilon theophrasti Medik. (Longinescu 1935; Drăgulescu 2018). They developed 200 hectares of farmland in Brăila county (SE Romania) for this purpose. Dimonie died unexpectedly in Bucharest on 8th December 1935 at the age of 65 (Longinescu 1935). During his lifetime, he wrote approximately 30 popular science articles, most of them outside the field of botany and none about the Balkan flora (Ştefureac 1984). A list of his articles for the journal Natura can be found in Longinescu (1936: 10).

Fig. 1.

Mihael Dimonie's visiting card from Dörfler's collection of letters from botanists kept in the University Library Uppsala, see Lack & Sydow (1984). – Reproduced by kind permission, © University Library Uppsala.

Fig. 2.

Samples of Mihael Dimonie's handwriting. – Top: from a letter to Halácsy kept in the Dörfler collection in Uppsala, see Lack & Sydow (1984). Reproduced by kind permission, © University Library Uppsala. – Top middle: from a herbarium label of Centaurea sp. (WU-Halácsy-Europaeum 0102561). – Bottom middle: from a herbarium label of Dryopteris pallida (Bory) Maire & Petitm. (WU-Halácsy-Europaeum 0103738). – Bottom: from a herbarium label of Ranunculus sp. (BUCF 33205).

Fig. 3.

Portrait of Mihael Dimonie (from Longinescu 1935). – Biblioteca Centrală Universitară “Lucian Blaga” Cluj-Napoca.

Although he was a contributor to the Flora Romaniae Exsiccata (Cent. VII–XI) in the 1920s and 1930s (Borza 1935), his pre-war Balkan gatherings are more relevant for botanical science. His Balkan material kept in the herbarium of Grecescu was destroyed on 4th April 1944 when the Bucharest herbarium (now BUC) burned down after an Allied air raid (Ştefureac 1986; Văduva-Poenaru 2000).

Fig. 4.

One of the few extant vouchers of Mihael Dimonie from after the First Balkan War: Ranunculus constantinopolitanus (DC.) d'Urv. (≡ R. villosus subsp. constantinopolitanus (DC.) Elenevsky) collected at Pădurea Reşca near Caracal, Romania (BUCF 33172).

Dimonie's plant collections

The herbarium vouchers of Dimonie's Plantae Macedonicae series, collected in present-day Albania, Bulgaria, Greece and North Macedonia, can be found in the following herbaria [important collections partly kept separate are in parentheses, herbarium codes are according to Thiers (2019+)]: B (herb. Bornmüller), BEO, BEOU, BM (herb. Lacaita), BP (herb. Degen), BR, BRNM, BRNU, BUCF (post-war material), C, CHER, CL (postwar material), DR, E, FI, FR, G (herb. Delessert), GAT, GB (herb. Hayek), H, JE (herb. Haussknecht, incl. herb. Sagorski), K, L, LD, LY, M, MA, P (herb. Giraudias), PR, PRC (herb. Velenovský), S, SARA, STR, TIR, US, VT, W (herb. Sabransky), WU (herb. Halácsy) and Z. According to unpublished letters addressed to Eugen von Halácsy (1842–1913) written in French and deposited in Uppsala (Lack & Sydow 1984), Dimonie was in close contact with Halácsy, Arpád von Degen (1866–1934) and Josef Velenovský (1858–1949). Therefore, the collections in BP, PR, PRC, W and WU are particularly rich in Dimonie's gatherings. There even exists in WU a Taraxacum voucher of plants grown from seeds taken from Dimonie's voucher ( WU 0104555) and collected by Heinrich von Handel-Mazzetti (1882–1940) (Zeisek & al. 2016:  WU 0104556). In 1909, Dimonie offered the centuria 1–6 of his Plantae regionis Salonicae et montis Athos for 36 Goldmark each in a German magazine (Weigel 1909: 59). His widespread exsiccata series Plantae Macedonicae was traded by Weigel in Germany at least until 1918 (Hertel & Schreiber 1988: 300).

Nevertheless, in the Index herbariorum (Thiers 2019+), he is only mentioned for WU and his name is also ignored in the account of Balkan collectors by Křivka & Holubec (2010). Because none of the listed herbaria has its holdings fully catalogued in a database, we cannot know for certain how many specimens Dimonie ever collected and distributed. According to the records at W and WU documenting acquisitions, herbarium WU bought two tranches: 750 vouchers of “plants from Albania” for 225 Austro-Hungarian kronen in February 1909, and 700 vouchers of “plants from Macedonia” for 267.40 Austro-Hungarian kronen in February 1910, a total of 1450 herbarium vouchers. Herbarium W acquired 555 vouchers of Plantae Macedonicae in 1909 (Steindachner 1910: 30), and 641 vouchers from “Pflanzen aus Mazedonien” in 1910 (Steindachner 1911: 29), in total 1196 vouchers. Unfortunately, the number of Dimonie vouchers in WU-Hal-Europaeum has not been documented. Because the original price for one voucher around 1910 was approximately 3 kronen, this would now be 15 € at purchasing-power parity.

Apart from his commercial sets of Plantae Macedonicae, issued often with conspicuous pre-printed labels of blue indelible ink (Fig. 5, 8B, 10), Dimonie also sold specimens provided only with handwritten labels, especially those considered rare or more interesting than the bulk of plants he distributed (Fig. 6, 8A, 11, 12). It should also be noted that Dimonie often distributed herbarium specimens without any identification (Fig. 5, 8A, 10).

Dimonie collected much material in North Macedonia, especially in the surroundings of Ohrid and Bitola, also in Struga, Sv. Naum, Resen, Debar and in the Baba, Galičica, Jablanica and Korab Mts. In Greece, he collected near Thessaloniki, Mt Athos, Mt Vermio, near Edessa, at the border region with North Macedonia (Voras Mts/ Nidže Mt, Mt Tzena/Kožuf, near Gevgelija), and on the N Aegean islands of Limnos and Thasos. Approximately 320 taxa have been registered for the Flora Hellenica Database (Kit Tan, unpublished; Strid & Tan 2017). A list of localities based on verified extant material is provided in Table 1. A map of Dimonie's collecting localities based on specimens as well as publications (Grecescu 1899, 1907) can be found in Fig. 7. According to the Flora Hellenica Database, some of his collections are new for Greece, e.g. Primula elatior (L.) L. collected in April 1909 in a forest near the Prodromos monastery on Mt Athos ( WU 0104412), and at Mt Doxa/Mt Vermio ( WU 0104413). This information had already been published by Fritsch (1916: 295–296), but was overlooked for a long time (Eleftheriadou & Raus 1996).

Dimonie collected in the European part of the late Ottoman Empire, but not within the Kingdom of Greece. His collections are therefore not mentioned in Halácsy's Conspectus florae graecae (1901–1912), although Dimonie was in good contact with the Austro-Hungarian botanist and had visited him in Vienna in 1909 [unpublished letters kept in Uppsala; see Lack & Sydow (1984)]. Halácsy's Herbarium Europaeum (WU-Halácsy-Europaeum) contains a large number of plants collected by Dimonie.

In 1909, Dimonie was collecting in the Pirin Mts (“Perin Dagh”) and the SW Rila Mts near Blagoevgrad in Bulgaria, at that time part of the Ottoman Empire. The Pirin Mts were, according to Velenovský (1911), a mountain range “almost unknown to botanists at that time”. The SW Rila Mts formed the border to the newly independent Bulgaria, and Dimonie therefore repeatedly wrote “ad extremum finis Turco-Bulgariae” on his vouchers.

Even though Dimonie obviously was aware of country borders in his time, it often remains impossible to clarify if the specimens were gathered in present-day Albania, Bulgaria, Greece or North Macedonia. However, in Floras, monographic revisions or herbarium databases the assignment to one of these modern countries is often made in an arbitrary and uncritical manner. Dimonie often used Ottoman toponyms difficult to locate nowadays, e.g. Cara-tach, Gül-tepe, Keci-kaja, Kerici-köj, Nisi-dagi. The fact that he distributed his vouchers in a series named Plantae Macedonicae (referring to historical Macedonia) increased the confusion in later literature and in herbarium databases. Handel-Mazzetti (1923: 259) and Rohlena (1940), for example, mentioned vouchers of Taraxacum bithynicum DC. and Aster alpinus var. cylleneus Boiss. & Orph., respectively, from “Jel-tepe, Perin Dagh” for North Macedonia, although they were collected on Mt Vihren in Bulgaria, on a peak called until 1942 El tepe or Jel-tepe. Information on his labels is likewise often scant, e.g. only “in m. Corab”, “in reg. alp. m. Jablanitza” or “collibus ad extremum finis Turco-Bulgariae. alt. 400 m”, referring to whole mountain ranges or a border region. Usually the labels are without the exact date, giving the year, or sometimes the year and month (e.g. VII. 1908 for July 1908 or 06/09 for June 1909), see Fig. 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11.

Table 1.

Dimonie's collecting localities in the southern Balkan Peninsula based on herbarium specimens verified to be extant. Current toponyms, if available, are in parentheses. – Country codes: AL = Albania; BG = Bulgaria; GR = Greece; MK = North Macedonia.

Fig. 5.

Holotype of Thymus pulvinatus var. perinicus Velen. ( PRC-Phanerogamae 452094), collected by Dimonie on Jel-tepe (Mt Vihren) in the Pirin Mts (Bulgaria) in August 1909. This Balkan endemic is now treated as T. perinicus (Velen.) Jalas (Euro+Med 2006+; Assyov & al. 2012; Genova 2015).

Fig. 6.

Handwritten labels of Mihael Dimonie. – A and B: Androsace hedraeantha Griseb. from the alpine region of Mt Korab, collected in July 1908. According to Barina (2017) this species grows at 2000–2400 m above sea level. A:  WU 0104753, see also Fritsch (1916: 305). B:  WU-Halácsy-Europaeum 0103775. – C and D: Minuartia baldaccii (Halácsy) Mattf. (≡ Alsine baldaccii Halácsy) from higher altitudes in the Jablanica Mts, collected in July 1908. C:  WU 0059967. D:  WU-Halácsy-Europaeum 0059783. In Dimonie's commercial set of Plantae Macedonicae (Fig. 6C) there is no indication that the specimen was collected in “Albania” and on the label in WU-Halácsy-Europaeum (Fig. 6D), the collecting year is absent.

Dimonie is usually not categorized as a plant collector for Albania (Barnes & Hoda 2001; Barina 2017), although he was mentioned by Baldacci (1925: 96, 98) and Markgraf (1932: 127). His “Albanian” vouchers are exclusively from the border ridges of the Jablanica Mts (Vierhapper 1909: 148, fig. 6C & D, 11, 12; Handel-Mazzetti 1910: 10; Murbeck 1933: 145; Wagenitz 1983: 153) and the Korab Mts (Wagenitz 1983: 153; Baltisberger 1994; Polatschek 2013: 179; Krendl 2014: 126, 129, 139, 143, 148, fig. 6 A & B, 8A). According to Jenő Béla Kümmerle (1876–1931), based on information from Dimonie himself, the latter could botanize in the “unknown” terrain of the Korab Mts by disguising himself in traditional Albanian costume; however, he failed to reach the peak of Korab (Kümmerle 1926: 30). This corroborates data from his Korab herbarium vouchers, which were collected at a maximum altitude of 2000–2100 m (see Engler & Irmscher 1916: 314; Erben 1985: 689). In several of his Plantae Macedonicae sets “Albania” is inscribed by hand (Fig. 6A, 8A), although Albania and North Macedonia were both still part of the Ottoman Empire. Dimonie followed ethnical aspects, traditions and wisely, his customers' preferences (Wettstein 1892: 1; Vierhapper 1914: 243; Hayek 1924–1933: Praefatio p. V). The herbarium vouchers collected at low to medium altitudes (e.g. as cited in Krendl 2014 for Albania) were most likely collected in the ethnically Albanian part of present-day North Macedonia (e.g. Satureja subspicata var. macedonica Velen., Fig. 8A). Only gatherings from the mountain ridges of the Jablanica Mts and, with some reservation, of the Korab Mts, may have been collected in Albania or at least close to its border (Fig. 6).

Ranunculus crenatus Waldst. & Kit. collected in the Vranica Planina (Bosnia and Herzegovina) in 1901 by I. Dimonie and published in Baltisberger (1994: 236) can be ascribed to his brother Iancu Dimonie.

During Dimonie's lifetime, Velenovský (1911), Fritsch (1916, 1918), Bornmüller (1932), Murbeck (1933) and, after his death, Rechinger (1944) published a remarkable number of plant records from the Balkan Peninsula based on Dimonie's collections or described taxa from his material. Velenovský (1911), in particular, described 12 taxa within a single paper. From these, only five taxa are accepted today: Anthyllis vulneraria subsp. vitellina (Velen.) Kuzmanov (Kuzmanov 1976; Anchev 2006; Nanev 2012), Saxifraga discolor Velen. (Tkach & al. 2015, 2019), Thymus perinicus (Velen.) Jalas (Euro+Med 2006+; Markova 2006; Assyov & al. 2012; Genova 2015), Viola frondosa (Velen.) Velen. (Dimopoulos & al. 2013; Raab-Straube & Henning 2018) and Verbascum dimoniei Velen. (Marhold 2011f; Dimopoulos & al. 2013). In the case of Saxifraga discolor (Fig. 8B), Dimonie presumed it could be new to science and wrote on the label of the specimen he sold to Velenovský: “[…] Si elle est nouvelle pourquoi ne la nom-mez pas Dimoniana!” [authors' translation: “If it is new why not name it Dimoniana!”]. Velenovský (1911), however, did not obey the request and named the species after its bicoloured, whitish-purple petals.

Fig. 7.

Map of Dimonie's collecting localities in the southern Balkan Peninsula. – Red lines: historical borders of the Ottoman Empire in 1908 sensu Kunz & al. (2003), kindly provided by Bogdan G. Popescu (Popescu 2017); green dots: data from Grecescu (1899, 1907); red dots: data from extant herbarium vouchers including data from the Flora Hellenica Database; question marks: exact localities not traceable; Dimonie's places of residence are underlined; mountains are in italics.

Fig. 8.

A: Label of the holotype of Satureja subspicata var. macedonica Velen., collected in the Korab Mts in July 1908 ( PRC-Phanerogamae 451330). “Satureja sp. n.” was written on the original label by J. Velenovský, who described the variety (Velenovský 1911). As often, Dimonie distributed the voucher without identification. Although he wrote “Albania”, the voucher more likely was collected in North Macedonia. – B: Label of the isolectotype of Saxifraga discolor Velen. ( PRC-Phanerogamae 451704), see Appendix 1. Dimonie distributed it without identification, but with a request to have it named after him should it prove to be a novelty.

Fig. 9.

Holotype of Hesperis verroiana F. Dvořák from the National Museum in Prague (PR 193244/11569), see Appendix 1. – Reproduced by kind permission, © National Museum Prague

Fig. 10.

The holotype of Verbascum dimoniei Velen. is mounted on two sheets in PRC; this is one of them ( PRC-Phanerogamae 451369). The type locality is Fetitza (Fitia) near Njausta (Naoussa) in the foothills of Mt Vermio in Greece.

Fig. 11.

Lectotype of Soldanella dimoniei Vierh. ( WU 0027910), see Appendix 1.

Fig. 12.

Label of the isolectotype of Soldanella dimoniei Vierh. ( WU-Halácsy-Europaeum 0040240), see Appendix 1. Dimonie probably wrote the label by hand during his visit to Vienna in February 1909, when he knew from Vierhapper (misspelt as “Fierhap.”) that his collection represented a new species to be published soon, in April 1909; see Vierhapper (1909).

It is not known how many taxa botanists have described based on Dimonie specimens. Since type material was often part of his Plantae Macedonicae series, iso-types and syntypes are available in many herbaria. More than two dozen type specimens and other authentic material mostly from W, WU and PRC can currently be viewed via Virtual Herbaria JACQ ( https://herbarium.univie.ac.at/database/search.php). Additional specimens of Dimonie are available online, e.g. via the Dutch botanical collections of Naturalis, i.e. L ( http://bioportal.naturalis.nl/), Sweden's Virtual Herbarium, i.e. GB, LD, S ( http://herbarium.emg.umu.se/), the herbarium catalogue of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh, i.e. E ( https://data.rbge.org.uk/search/herbarium/) and the database of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, i.e. US ( https://collections.nmnh.si.edu/search/botany/). In Appendix 1, we lectotypify seven names and present nomenclatural notes on six others that were described based on material collected by Dimonie, and lectotypify one name based on material collected by Ignaz Dörfler. In Appendix 2, we present a preliminary list of 29 names based on plant material collected by Dimonie.

According to Euro+Med (2006+), most of the taxa described based on Dimonie's gatherings, especially those at infraspecific level by Velenovský (1911), are no longer accepted. This is also true for some described at a later stage, e.g. Hesperis verroiana F. Dvořák (Dvořák 1966; Appendix 1, Fig. 9), now included in H. theophrasti Borbás subsp. theophrasti by Tan & Suda (2002). Others are disputed, e.g. Viola beckiana subsp. pascua (W. Becker) Trinajstić, accepted in Euro+Med (2006+), but reduced to a synonym of V. eximia Formánek in Erben (1985: 459) and therefore not listed in Dimopoulos & al. (2013); see also Appendix 1.

To honour Dimonie, taxonomists of the early 20^th century described several infraspecific entities of no current taxonomic relevance, e.g. Cerastium moesiacum f. dimoniei Borza (Borza 1913: 57, as “Dimonii”), or as unpublished manuscript names, e.g. “Potentilla dimoniei Adam.” in sched. (Gandoger 1912; Urumov 1914), “Potentilla subserica var. dimoniei (Adam.) Bornm.” (Bornmüller 1928: 254) and “Cerastium dimoniei” (Soška 1939).

Of the four published species bearing his name (Hieracium dimoniei Zahn, Hypericum dimoniei Velen., Soldanella dimoniei Vierh., Verbascum dimoniei Velen.), only two are still accepted according to Euro+Med (2006+), viz. Hieracium dimoniei and Verbascum dimoniei.

Hieracium dimoniei was originally described based on material from the Korab Mts and is an intermediate species between H. waldsteinii Tausch and H. pilosum Froel. endemic to Albania, Greece, Kosovo and North Macedonia (Zahn 1910; Gottschlich & al. 2010; Szeląg 2015; Gottschlich 2016). The lectotype from PRC is depicted in Szeląg (2015: 46).

Hypericum dimoniei was described from Porta-Huma near Gevgelija (Kožuf/Tzena/Dzana Mts) at the borders of Greece and North Macedonia (Velenovský 1911) and is now synonymized with Hypericum olympicum L. (Marhold 2011c). Holotype:  PRC-Phanerogamae 452062.

Soldanella dimoniei is a microspecies by Vierhapper (1909) described from the higher altitudes of the Jablanica Mts (North Macedonia); see Appendix 1 and Fig. 11, 12. Today it is accepted only by Barina (2017) and Barina & al. (2018). Markgraf (1931) considered it a variety of Soldanella pindicola Hausskn. and Meyer (1985) synonymized it with the latter, an opinion followed by Raus (1986), Micevski (1998), Zhang & Kadereit (2004), Marhold (2011d), Pils (2016) and Štubňová & al. (2017).

Verbascum dimoniei was described based on specimens from North Central Greece (Fetitza prope Njausta [Naoussa]) distributed by Dimonie as Plantae Macedonicae no. 327. It occurs in Greece and North Macedonia (Velenovský 1911) and is very similar to V. graecum Boiss., but was accepted in Marhold (2011f) and Dimopoulos & al. (2013). The holotype in PRC was mounted onto two sheets; the one with the original label is depicted in Fig. 10.

The identification of plant material from the Southern Balkans must have been daunting and challenging before the seminal works of Halácsy (1900–1912) and Hayek (1924–1933) appeared. Therefore, it is not surprising that Dimonie's determinations were also criticized, e.g., by Handel-Mazzetti (1926) in a review of the first volume of Hayek's Prodromus florae balcanicae: “Die leichtere Bereisbarkeit der Balkanländer hat das Interesse dafür gesteigert und beträchtliches zum guten Teile falsch bestimmtes (Adamović, Dimonie) Material hat sich in den größeren Herbarien angesammelt, […].” [authors' translation: “Ease of travel in the Balkan lands has increased both the interest [in collecting in this area] as well as the considerable and erroneously determined material (Adamović, Dimonie) that has gathered in large herbaria, …”]. An example of a Mediterranean species in Apiaceae difficult to determine is Seseli arenarium M. Bieb. (= S. tortuosum auct. fl. graec., non L.; Lyskov & al. 2018) originally named as Hippomarathrum cristatum (DC.) Boiss. ( WU 0095813). Mattfeld & al. (1925) also wrote that Dimonie often confused localities in his exsiccata, a fact obviously known to his contemporaries.

As is often the case with large sets of material within series, his distributed exsiccata contain mixed gatherings. Persson (1999: 77) noted that in different herbaria sheets/ vouchers of the presumably same Colchicum gathering collected in 1907 from the foothills of the Galičica Mts near Ohrid contained either C. bivonae Guss. or C. haynaldii Heuff. Villar & al. (2015) found Tamarix parviflora DC. and T. hampeana Boiss. & Heldr. on the same sheet in G, collected by Dimonie from coastal Thessaloniki. Polatschek (2013: 100, 104) indicated that a gathering of Syrenia cana (Piller & Mitterp.) Neilr., distributed as Flora Romaniae Exsiccata nr. 253b, comprised both Erysimum canum (Piller & Mitterp.) Polatschek and E. quadrangulum Desf. Franzén (1986) excluded Dimonie's gatherings of Achillea setacea Waldst. & Kit. from Mt Athos (erroneously labelled as A. ageratifolia (Sm.) Boiss. subsp. ageratifolia) from his distribution map.

Nevertheless, the thousands of vouchers collected by Dimonie in the southern Balkan Peninsula between 1894 and 1912 render him one of the most important plant collectors of his time, even though only the commercial specimens from 1907 to 1910 are preserved. His contributions to the flora of Greece and North Macedonia are comparatively well known to science (Greuter 1975; Strid 1978; Matevski 2009), but those for the floras of the Albanian border regions (Fig. 6, 8, 11, 12) and for the Pirin and SW Rila Mts in Bulgaria (Fig. 5, 8B) are almost forgotten (see, however, Baldacci 1925; Stefanoff 1930; Stojanoff & Achtaroff 1935). In comparison to the privileged situation that many professional taxonomists at universities or museums enjoyed, Dimonie's position as a plant trader and teacher did not permit him to publish his material himself. He was hindered by a lack of time, botanical literature and a large institutional herbarium where he could compare and identify his specimens. He was fully aware of these circumstances and, in a letter to Halácsy, regretted this as well as the high expenses incurred for his journeys and the low remuneration received for his specimens.

His private herbarium, probably one of the most comprehensive collections of the Balkan flora in his time, and his Balkan vouchers deposited in the herbarium Grecescu in BUC were destroyed in the two World Wars. What remains are his commercial vouchers from 1907 to 1910, which he had sold to herbaria all over Europe, and his contributions to Aromanian cultural heritage (Codex Dimonie, Aromanian plant names and ethnobotany). Despite all shortcomings, the scientific value of his Plantae Macedonicae is obvious and his vouchers are still used by taxonomists. Košanin (1912: 208) already regretted that “Dimonie's vouchers [from the Korab Mts] are stored unpublished in various herbaria”. Now we stand at the same position more than a hundred years later and only the complete digitization of major European herbaria including OCR-aided databasing of label information can help (Drinkwater & al. 2014; Soltis 2017; Besnard & al. 2018). This would contribute to a thorough knowledge of the extant gatherings of often forgotten historic collectors like Mihael Dimonie.