Notes on the Myrtaceae of Suriname

In trying to prepare the account of the Myrtaceae for PULLE’s Flora of Suriname I soon found that a revision of the Myrtaceae of whole Guiana, especially of French Guiana, and preferably also of the Amazonian district, is necessary. The account would be of little value as long as our knowledge of the synonymy and the distribution of the species is so incomplete. The Myrtaceae of Guiana have been treated by BERG in Linnaea XXVII (1855—56) p. 1—512, XXIX (1858) p. 207—256 and XXX (1861) p. 647—713. Yet many species previously described from French Guiana, especially by AUBLET and by DE CANDOLLE, were not known to BERG. Moreover, BERG often based species on insufficient material, as has been pointed out by URBAN in his revision of the West Indian Myrtaceae in Engl. Bot. Jahrb. XIX (1895) p. 563. In this publication of URBAN the synonymy of several species common to the West Indies and Guiana is cleared up (Trinidad and Tobago are included in the West Indies). Another valuable contribution is SAGOT’s too little noticed account of the Myrtaceae of French Guiana in Annales Sciences Naturelles 6.20 (1885) p. 181—198. But SAGOT apparently did not know BERG’s last publication in Linnaea XXX, in which RICHARD’s collection from French Guiana is treated. Thus SAGOT sometimes cites specimens of RICHARD without knowing that they must be duplicates of the types of one of BERG’s new species and his account remains very incomplete.