William Nylander's collected lichenological papers

On January 3, 1822, William Nylander, one of the greatest lichen taxonomists who ever lived, was born in the town of Oulu (Uleéiborg), northern Finland. In accordance with the agreement made in 1878 between Nylander and University of Helsinki, Nylander? s collections and library were shipped from Paris to Finland in 1899. The number of specimens totalled 51066. As a rule Nylander had packeted samples of each species in a common larger envelope which bore the name of the species and, frequently, also the date and journal where original description had been published, especially those of the taxa described by himself. The specimens were usually affixed to stiff paper and the name of the lichen, its locality (few specimens are without any locality), collector, and year of collection are generally appended below. In addition, he commonly indicated the spore measurements in millimeters in the upper right hand cor- ner, and gave simple drawings of several spores or pycnoconidia or, more rarely, a section of an ascocarp.