An historical review of the identification of the Netherlands’ Charophyta

In 1938, Verdam published an account of the then-known Charophyta of the Netherlands in the English language (cf. this journal, vol. 3), and one year later (1939) another in our own language in “Nederlandsch Kruidkundig Archief”. In both papers reference was made to only five Netherlands’ publications on the same subject, the oldest of which is dating from 1846. In studying i.a. the history of the Malaysian Charophyta (Zaneveld, 1940) I found that much more was published on the Charophyta of our Low Countries. As will be seen below, it became evident that the first printed record of a Netherlands’ Charophyte dates as far back as 1636. It seems worth while to publish these notes on the history of the identification of our Charophyta as, moreover, a number of additional facts have become known. The data of the present review have been taken from the following sources (chronologically arranged): 1. herbals ; 2. catalogues of Botanic Gardens; 3. local floras; 4. general floras and taxonomic textbooks; 5. monographs.