Type Specimens in China National Herbarium (PE)

Predecessors of the China National Herbarium (PE), Institute of Botany, Chinese Academy of Sciences are the Herbarium, Department of Botany, Fan Memorial Institute of Biology, Peiping (1928), as well as the Herbarium, Institute of Botany, National Academy of Peiping (1929). Now PE has developed into the largest herbarium in Asia. The current collections contain more than 2,650,000 specimens in the herbarium, including mosses, ferns, seed plants, and seed collections and plant fossil samples. Among them, there are about 20,000 type specimens (holotype, isotype, lectotype, isolectotype, neotype, isoneotype, epitype, isoeptypen, paratype, iosparatype, syntype, isosyntype).

For this series of bilingual books, type specimens were produced by selecting the most important type specimens deposited at PE under the same scientific name (species, subspecies, variety and form), and then were also reviewed and scanned. After compilation, Type Specimens in China National Herbarium (PE) will consist of 14 volumes. The taxa are arranged by family according to the system of the Flora Bryophytorum Sinicorum and Flora Reipublicae Popularis Sinicae. Infra-family taxa are alphabetized by genera, species, subspecies, varieties and forms. The explanation of each taxon is listed in the figure caption with Chinese name, scientific name, original publication, nature of specimen, type locality (country / province / county / mountain if present), altitude, collection date, collector and collection number. The collector and type locality in this book follow Index Herbariorum Sinicorum (L.K. Fu, 1993) and Gazetter of China: An Index to the Atlas of the People‘s Republic of China (Chinese Academy of Surveying & Mapping, 1997) respectively.

This series is a very important work for researching and identifying Chinese plants. It could also be used as a reference by plant taxonomists and people from botanic research institutions, educational institutions and production departments at home and abroad.