A contribution to the fern flora of French Guiana

In recent times very little has been published on the fern flora of French Guiana. In 1918, R. BONAPARTE published a list of fern specimens, collected chiefly by Leprieur and Mélinon (p. 365: Guyane franςaise, plusieurs collecteurs, herbier du Prince Bonaparte; apart from some scattered notes in other volumes of Notes Ptéridologiques); POSTHUMUS’s records of ferns from that region, which are included in his work on the ferns of Surinam (1928), were partly based on Bonaparte’s work, but comparatively little new material had been added to the existing collections. Consequently, when Mme M. Tardieu-Blot informed me that the Paris herbarium contained some unidentified collections of Pteridophytes from that region, I accepted willingly her offer to study them. In this paper are enumerated new or critical or in some other respects interesting records of ferns from the material concerned. It is regrettable that most collections do not possess indications of precise localities, or even lack collectors names, numbers, or both; it is supposed that most of these specimens have been collected by Leprieur.