The fern herbarium at the Komarov Botanical Institute, Leningrad

The Herbarium is arranged according to Christensen’s Index Filicum (1905). I examined all the Old World specimens in Dryopteris and Aspidium, both in the general herbarium and in the separate herbarium for China and Japan. It appears that the genera segregated by Christensen from Dryopteris (e.g. Pteridrys) in the Third Supplement to the Index (1954) have not been segregated in this herbarium. Type specimens have been removed by Dr. A. Bobrov and are in a separate series arranged alphabetically under basionyms. Selection of types was done rather hastily, and many of the specimens need critical study. For example, most Wallich specimens are filed as types of the names in Wallich’s catalogue, with no check as to whether the names have been subsequently validated. An additional complication is the fact that (especially in Thelypteridaceae) Wallich in several cases included specimens of two or three species under one number.