(French West Indies)boj_1 - CNCFlora

Antilles, mostly based on the collections of J. F.
l’Herminier (Fée, 1866). After his death, part of the
Fée collections was sold to the Jardim Botânico in Rio
de Janeiro, Brazil (RB), where many types from
Guadeloupe are still held (Windisch, 1982; M. J. M.
Christenhusz, pers. observ.). Even although Fée cited
specimens when describing new species, l’Herminier
did not use a numbering system and multiple specimens
of the same species from the same collecting
year exist but should not be considered duplicates.
Because many collections of l’Herminier are widely
distributed, most types of species described by Fée
need to be lectotypified. Generally, I have chosen type
specimens which are annotated by Fée, but if these
specimens are incomplete or difficult to interpret, I
sometimes opted to lectotypify other original material
or an illustration from the original work.
In 1868, T. Husnot collected pteridophytes in the
French Antilles and he published his findings in a
catalogue a few years later (Husnot, 1870). Father A.
Duss visited Guadeloupe and Marie Galante several
times (1873–1874, 1883–1884, 1890–1899, 1902, 1904,
1907) and he published his data as part of his Flore
Cryptogamique des Antilles Françaises (Duss, 1903).
Adrien Questel, a resident of St Barthélemy collected
in Guadeloupe between 1932 and 1942. He
described the flora of both islands extensively
(Questel, 1941, 1951). During the 1930s, various
other botanists visited the Guadeloupe archipelago
and made extensive collections of ferns. From 1928 to
1938 Father L. Quentin, a resident of Martinique,
collected in Guadeloupe, often together with Swiss
botanist H. Stehlé who collected in Guadeloupe and
Martinique from 1935 to 1960. In 1936 there was an
increase of collection activity at the hands of V. and P.
Allorge, J. Feldman and Rodriguez (1934 to 1938).
In the 1950s to 1970s, botanists from the USA
showed an increased interest in the Lesser Antilles, to
prepare collections for the Flora of the Lesser Antilles
project. In 1950, the general editor of this series, R. A.
Howard, collected on Guadeloupe and in 1973 on St
Maarten. George R. Proctor, who wrote the fern
volume for the Flora of the Lesser Antilles (Proctor,
1977), made elaborate fern collections on Guadeloupe,
St Maarten, Marie Galante and Les Saintes in 1959
and on La Désirade and Marie Galante in 1960. On
Guadeloupe, Proctor collected ferns together with
moss specialist C. J. Le Gallo (collections from 1959 to
1965), for whom he named a species of Diplazium.
Proctor (1977) listed 272 pteridophyte species for
Guadeloupe.
Floristic studies on Guadeloupe continued in the
1980s, notably by Serge Barrier, who collected ferns
there between 1980 and 1982, and more extensively
by Guadeloupe resident J. Vivant, who published
several articles describing his new findings on fern
INDEX PTERIDOPHYTORUM GUADALUPENSIUM 215
floristics of Guadeloupe (Vivant, 1987a, b, 1988,
1989a, b, 1990, 1996). This was followed by an index
to the plants of the French Antilles (Fournet & Hoff,
1999), in preparation for a flora. Unfortunately this
list included various species several times, because
the same species were listed under various genera.
Fournet collected many fern specimens, mostly
between 1987 and 1992, but in the end the ferns were
not included in his flora (Fournet, 2002).
For my studies on neotropical Marattiaceae (Christenhusz,
2007a), I collected ferns on Martinique,
Guadeloupe and Dominica in 2003, together with
Mikko Paajanen from Turku University, Finland.
After this first brief visit I realized that the diversity
of Guadeloupe was much greater than I had previously
thought and I therefore returned to the island
in 2005 accompanied by Frank Katzer (British Pteridological
Society, Edinburgh). We made a large collection
of pteridophytes (deposited at TUR) and made
additional observations of common ferns when they
were not collected. For most species, material in silica
was collected, some of which has been used in molecular
phylogenetic studies of ferns (e.g. Schuettpelz,
Korall & Pryer, 2006; Schuettpelz & Pryer, 2007).
SITE DESCRIPTION
The Guadeloupe archipelago lies between 15 °50′W
and 16 °30′N, in the northern part of the Lesser
Antilles (the eastern arc of the West Indies). The
islands are positioned between Montserrat and
Dominica (Fig. 1). The archipelago consists of the
largely volcanic islands of Basse Terre and Les Saintes
and the mostly calcareous islands of Grand Terre,
Marie Galante, La Désirade and Petit Terre. Between
Basse Terre and Grand Terre there are vast mangrove
forests and the islands are separated by a narrow
strait. These two islands are connected by a bridge and
together form the main island of Guadeloupe (Fig. 2).
The Guadeloupe archipelago has a tropical maritime
climate, tempered by the north-east trade winds.
The temperature on the coast varies between 25 and
28 °C, with extremes of 20 and 34 °C. In the mountains
above 600 m the temperature may drop to 16 °C
and at the summit of La Soufrière to 4 °C. There are
two distinct seasons, the ‘creole lent’, or dry season
(December to April), and ‘winter’, or rainy season
(July to October). Precipitation varies with elevation
and orientation. The montane parts of Basse Terre
receive > 2540 mm, whereas Grand Terre, La Désirade
and Marie Galante are considerably drier and
receive c. 990 mm of rain annually.
Situated on Basse Terre, the volcano La Soufrière,
at 1467 m, is the highest mountain in the Lesser
Antilles. This elevation range creates large topographic
and climatic variability on a very local scale,
© 2009 The Linnean Society of London, Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2009, 161, 213–277