Book reviews

After Pankow’s flora of the baltic algae this is another useful book about Scandinavian seaweeds. In Scandinavia there have always been many important phycologists, but no complete algal flora of one of the Scandinavian countries had been published so far. The danish algal flora of Rosenvinge and Lund has not been finished and Kylin’s floras covered the southwestern part of Sweden only. Therefore, this first norwegian algal flora is an important step forward. The text is in Norwegian, but the keys and the descriptions are easy to be read. The 478 species of algae dealt with (204 Rhodophytes, 175 Phaeophytes, and 99 Chlorophytes-Cyanophytes are not incorporated) are placed in 215 genera. Species of 180 genera are figured, sometimes more than one species of a genus. Not illustrated are those genera which mostly have only one occasional representative in Norway. I missed, however, figures of species of Hildenbrandia, Laminaria, Lithophyllum, and Ulvaria. It is a pity that the drawings are often of poor quality. Of the 153 drawings at least 33 are badly printed. Especially the washed lithographs by Kuckuck and Reinke are severely damaged. Most drawings are taken from the literature – only five are original. The 143 photographs are probably all original – no references are given for them.