Finnish botanists and mycologist in the Arctic

Abstract Finnish botanists and mycologists have studied Arctic areas and timber line regions since the beginning of the 18th century. Most expeditions to the Kola Peninsula were made between 1800 and 1917, and until 1945 to Lapponia petsamoënsis on the western rim of the Kola Peninsula. Since those years these areas have been part of the Soviet Union or Russia. Svalbard, Newfoundland and Labrador have been studied repeatedly as well, Svalbard since the 1860’s, and Newfoundland and Labrador since the 1930’s. This article focus on Finnish collections. Those are deposited in the herbaria of Helsinki (H), Turku (TUR) and Oulu (OULU) universities, except materials from the Nordenskiöld expeditions which were mainly deposited in Stockholm (S). Concerning the Kola Peninsula, collections at H are most extensive. Exact number of specimens are not known, but by rough estimate the number is about 60,000, with an additional 110,000 observations included in the data base. These expeditions have provided material to describe 305 new taxa to science, viz. 47 algae, 78 bryophytes, 25 fungi, 136 lichens and 19 vascular plants. This number is an underestimate, as many new species have been described in several separate taxonomic articles. At least 63 persons have contributed to making these collections to Finnish herbaria. Of those 52 are of Finnish nationality. Key words: bryophytes, fungi, vascularplants, Finnish, ArcticThe accepted manuscript in pdf format is listed with the files at the bottom of this page. The presentation of the authors' names and (or) special characters in the title of the manuscript may differ slightly between what is listed on this page and what is listed in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript; that in the pdf file of the accepted manuscript is what was submitted by the author