Some Notes on Charophyta collected in the Netherlands West Indies, north Venezuela and Colombia

As far as I know, only three papers are dealing with Charophyta of the Netherlands West Indies. In 1858, in “Monatsbericht der koniglichen Akademie der Wissenschaften, Berlin”, Braun records two species from Paramaribo, viz. Nitella microcarpa A. Br. and Chara hydropitys Reichend, ap. Moessl. These species are also enumerated in the “Fragmente einer Monographie der Characeen” (Braun & Nordstedt, 1882), in which another species is recorded from Curaçao, viz. Chara gymnopus A. Br. f. curassavica A. Br., now to be named Chara zeylanica Willd. f. curassavica (A. Br.) H. et J. Groves. The third paper is that of H. and J. Groves in Urban’s Symbolae Antillanae (1911), in which the last-named species is once more recorded. In 1930 Mr P. Wagenaar Hummelinck made an excursion to Curasao, Aruba and Bonaire with the main object of studying the land and freshwater fauna. In 1936 and 1937 he again visited these islands and, moreover, a.o. the island of Margarita off the Venezuelan coast, the Venezuelan peninsula Paraguana and the Colombian peninsula La Goajira (Wagenaar Hummelinck, 1940). In the various inland-waters also Algae and Phanerogams have been collected. The aquatic Phanerogams were described by Van Ooststroom (1939); the Charophyta will be the subject of the present paper.